Jenny Uglow

Jennifer "Jenny" Sheila Uglow OBE (birth name JS Crowther; born 1947 ) is a British biographer, historian, critic and publisher. Until her retirement in 2013 she was an editor at Chatto & Windus . Her works on Elizabeth Gaskell , William Hogarth , Thomas Bewick, and the Lunar Society have received critical acclaim. In addition, she wrote a lexicon with biographies of women, which was published several times.

She won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2002 and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for The Lunar Men, Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World in 2003 and the Hawthornden Prize in 2018 for Mr Lear .

Life

Uglow grew up in Cumbria and later in Dorset . She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1958 to 1964 and also studied at Anne's College , University of Oxford . After graduating with her first degree in English, she began studying literature for a bachelor's degree. In 1971 she married Steve Uglow, a lawyer at Kent University . The couple have four children - three sons and a daughter - and six grandchildren. Uglow has lived in Canterbury , Kent, since 2015 .

Uglow has worked as a publisher since she left university. She was also a senior editor at Chatto & Windus until 2013.

She was an honorary professor at Warwick University , vice president of the Gaskell Society, and trustee of the Wordsworth Trust . She is also a former member of the British Library's Humanities Advisory Group .

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Biographies

Uglow has written an encyclopedia for the biographies of prominent women. The first edition was published in 1982. In 2007 the work was in the fourth edition and contained 2000 biographies. Other authors were involved in the later editions. Later she wrote:

"I embarked on the Macmillan Biographical Dictionary of Women in a fit of pique because all reference books were full of men: it was a mad undertaking, born of a time when feminists wanted heroines and didn't have Google."

"In a fit of anger, I started Macmillan's biographical dictionary on women because all the reference books were full of men: it was a crazy company born when feminists were looking for heroines and there was no Google."

- Jenny Uglow : The Guardian

Her first continuous biographies were of the Victorian writers George Eliot (1987) and Elizabeth Gaskell (1993). This had to do with her continued interest in documenting women's biographies and reflected her own literary background.

Subsequent work continued into the past, with themes going back to the 18th century. Uglow's works deal with Henry Fielding (1995), William Hogarth (1997) and Thomas Bewick (2006). The Lunar Society scientists such as Erasmus Darwin , Matthew Boulton , James Watt , Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood were the subject of their award-winning work The Lunar Men (2003).

Nonfiction and journalism

Uglow's non-biographical works include the history of landscaping in Britain, which she wrote for the Royal Horticultural Society's bicentenary in 2004.

She is also a critic for the Times Literary Supplement , the Sunday Times , the Guardian , the New York Review of Books and the Independent on Sunday . She has also edited collections of the writings of Walter Pater (1973) and Angela Carter (1997), and co-edited a number of essays on Charles Babbage (1997).

Awards

With The Lunar Men: The Friends who Made the Future 1730-1810 Uglow won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography in 2002, and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in History of the PEN (2003). This work was also shortlisted twice for the Whitbread Book Award . Her biographies, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories and Hogarth: A Life and a World, were both shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award in the Biographies category, and three more of her books were long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction . In 2014 her research on the home front during the Napoleonic Wars, In These Times , was on the longlist for the Duff Cooper Prize and in the further selection for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Uglow was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 2018 for Mr Lear .

According to the charitable association Book Trust , was the nonfiction Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick , the critics most often selected "book of the year" ( Book of the Year ) in the year of 2006.

Uglow has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1998 .

She has been made Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham , the University of Kent , Staffordshire University and Birmingham City University . In 2008 she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her literary services. In 2010 she became President of the Alliance of Literary Societies as the successor to Aeronwy Thomas .

Publications

Biographies and Studies

• George Eliot . Little, Brown, London 1987, ISBN 9780860684008 .
• Elizabeth Gaskell. A Habit of Stories . Faber & Faber, London, Boston 1993, ISBN 9780571170364 .
• Henry Fielding . Northcote, Plymouth 1995, ISBN 9780746307601 .
• Hogarth. A Life and a World . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York 1997, ISBN 9780374171698 .
• Dr Johnson, His Club and Other Friends . National Portrait Gallery , London 1998, ISBN 9781855142329 .
• The Lunar Men. Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World . Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 2002, ISBN 9780374194406 .
• Nature's Engraver. A Life of Thomas Bewick . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009, ISBN 9780226823911 .
• Words and Pictures. Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition . Faber & Faber, London 2008, ISBN 978-0571242504 .
• A gambling man. Charles II and the Restoration . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0571217335 .
• The Pinecone. The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine - Antiquarian, Architect, and Visionary . Faber, London 2012, ISBN 978-0571269501 .
• In These Times. Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815 . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0374280901 .
• Mr. Lear. A Life of Art and Nonsense . Faber & Faber, London 2017, ISBN 978-0571269549 .

Non-fiction

• A Little History of British Gardening . Chatto & Windus, London 2012, ISBN 978-1784740313 .

As editor

• Walter Pater: Essays on Literature and Art . Durrington, Worthing 1973, ISBN 978-0460101929 .
• Angela Carter: Shaking a Leg . Collected Journalism and Writings. Chatto & Windus, 1997, ISBN 978-0701163365 .
• The Vintage Book of Ghosts . Vintage, New York 1997, ISBN 978-0099744818 .
• with Francis Spufford : Cultural Babbage . Technology, Time and Invention. Faber & Faber, London, Boston 1997, ISBN 978-0571172429 .
• Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography . (later editions with Maggy Hendry ) Palgrave Macmillan, London 2005 (4th edition), ISBN 978-1403934482

Web links

• Website Jenny Uglow

Remarks

Unless otherwise noted: All web links in this section were last accessed on October 20, 2016.

1. ↑ Second name according to The London Gazette, December 29, 2007, Supplement, p. 12 ( online ).
2. ↑ Birth name according to Uglow Family History, Uglows in Kent, Family 5: Steve (Uglow) and Jenny Crowther .
3. ↑ Jenny Uglow website, intro.
4. ↑ The Slab Guild Newsletter Page 6. ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ St. Anne's College Distinguished alumnae, Arts and entertainment.
6. ↑ Uglow Family History, Uglows in Kent, Family 5: Steve and Jenny Crowther.
7. ^ The Royal Society of Literature, Sue Gaisford, Jenny Uglow is to be the next Chair of the RSL.
8. ↑ Uglow Family History, Uglows in Kent, Family 5: Steve and Jenny Crowther.
9. ^ The Gaskell Society Celebrating the life and work of Elizabeth Gaskell, The Gaskell Society Committee, Vice-President - Jenny Uglow.
10. ^ Wordsworth Trust, Trustees.
11. ^ Susan E. Searing, September 22, 2007, Biographical reference works for and about women, from the advent of the women's liberation movement to the present: an exploratory analysis.
12. ↑ Jenny Uglow website, Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography.
13. ^ The Palgrave Macmillan, The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography.
14. ↑ Friends reunited , The Guardian, April 30, 2005; Retrieved February 19, 2016.
15. ↑ James Buchan, Sept. 14, 2002, The Guardian, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future, 1730-1810.
16. ↑ cf. z. B. Profile Jenny Uglow , Guardian.
17. ^ The University of Edinburgh, The James Tait Black Prize Biography winners 2000–2009.
18. ^ Deutsch PEN, PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.
19. ^ The Guardian, Michelle Pauli, April 22, 2010, Samuel Johnson prize longlist spans the globe.
20. ↑ The Guardian, Alison Flood, September 2, 2014 Samuel Johnson prize 2014 longlist spotlights memoirs.
21. ^ The Guardian, Joel Rickett, Jan. 13, 2007, The bookseller.
22. ^ The Royal Society of Literature, Current RSL Fellows.
23. ^ University of Kent, Honorary graduates 2000-06.