, subject of one of Uglow's earliest biographies After leaving university, Uglow worked in publishing and until 2013 was an editorial director of the publishing company
Chatto & Windus, an imprint of
Random House. She has been an honorary visiting professor at the
University of Warwick, and for many years acted as a trustee of the
Wordsworth Trust. She was formerly a member of the
British Library's Advisory Group for the Humanities. though later versions involved other editors. Uglow later wrote: Her first full-length biographies, depicting the Victorian women writers
George Eliot (1987) and
Elizabeth Gaskell (1993), continued her interest in documenting women, and her literary background. '', by
William Hogarth Subsequent works moved further into the past, with subjects including the 18th century author
Henry Fielding (1995), and artists
William Hogarth (1997),
Thomas Bewick (2006) and Edward Lear. The scientists and engineers of the
Lunar Society, including
Erasmus Darwin,
Matthew Boulton,
James Watt,
Joseph Priestley and
Josiah Wedgwood, are the subject of her prize-winning work
The Lunar Men (2003).
The Pinecone: A Life of Sarah Losh (2012), tells the story of a pioneering Victorian woman architect, while
InThese Times (2014) is a large-scale group biography exploring the home front during the Napoleonic wars. Her latest book
A Year with Gilbert White:
The First Great Nature Writer (2025) examines the life of the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White through his journal for 1781. Work on more recent periods includes
Sybil and Cyril ( 2021), a joint biography of the 1930s lino-cut artists Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power, and
The Quentin Blake Book (2022), which was written to mark the artist’s 90th birthday. Uglow's biographies have always been particularly praised for their vivid, detailed recreation of the time and place in which their subjects lived. "No one gives us the feel of past life as she does" writes
A. S. Byatt of ''Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick
, and a review of The Lunar Men
in The Observer claims "never has the eighteenth century come so much to life." Her book on Gilbert White was described in The Observer'' as ”A glorious celebration of curiosity and nature.” from
History of British Birds Other writing and editing Uglow's non-biographical writing includes a history of gardening in Britain, written for the bicentenary of the
Royal Horticultural Society in 2004, which Uglow describes as a "labour of love". In the past she acted as a historical consultant on several period dramas for the
BBC, including
Wives and Daughters (1999),
Daniel Deronda (2002),
He Knew He Was Right (2004),
North and South (2004),
Bleak House (2005) and
Cranford (2007), as well as for the films
Pride and Prejudice (2005) and
Miss Potter (2006). ==Awards and honours==