Kirkus
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This elegant biography of a little-known Cumbrian landowner, builder and local daughter captures the rural and industrial changes in Georgian England. Accomplished British historian Uglow (A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, 2010, etc.) ably depicts the picturesque landscape of Carlisle, just south of the Scottish border. As the eldest daughter of deep descendants of the Wreay landed gentry, who pioneered the iron and alkali works feeding the Industrial Revolution, Sarah Losh (17851853) and her beloved younger sister, Katharine, did not feel compelled to marry and relinquish their independence. Rich from their father's and uncles' early industriousness, well-educated, strong-willed and bookish, the daughters were able to travel to Italy and elsewhere to study art and architecture, and they brought their ideas home to "improve" their estate and local structures such as the Carlisle school and church. After the death of her sister in 1834, Sarah threw herself into the work of building, combining her love of poetry, antiquities and her ancient land into a distinct, original style that was not Gothic, but that melded simple, rustic elements of the old Saxon and Norman, what she considered Lombard Romanesque. Employing in the woodwork designs of available flora and fauna like eagles and pine cones, Sarah embarked on work as a sculptor herself. With a light touch, Uglow integrates greater historical developments--e.g., the Napoleonic wars and the development of Romanticism--within an intimate bucolic story of people whose life was the land. A writer who knows her subject intimately creates a fully fleshed portrait of an England that would soon vanish with the advent of the railroads.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
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This is as much a biography of an era, a coming-of-age story about an England on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, when romanticism and industrial fervor coexisted, as it is about an exceptional 19th-century woman-whose writings have not in fact survived. Uglow (The Lunar Men) portrays the innovation and intellect of the privileged Miss Sarah Losh (1786-1853), a writer and poet as well as an architect. The title refers to the emblem she used extensively in the eccentric Lake District church she designed. In many ways this is an interpretive biography, with Uglow understanding Sarah as well as her sister through the writings of their male family members and associates. The approach results in Uglow's simultaneously broad yet detailed perspective. Endowed with a liberal education from her father, his compatriots (including William Wordsworth) and her uncle James Losh, and with the resolve to benefit from it, Losh and her sister, rather than their sickly younger brother, inherited their father's wealthy estate. Uglow focuses on the whimsical church designed by Sarah Losh and how she was able to pursue such an undertaking that reflected both the Industrial Age and the romantic appeal of nature. Verdict This study will appeal to avid readers of 19th-century British studies. Readers seeking a uniquely female perspective and story will be disappointed as the scant record includes no such personal details.-Kelsey Berry Philpot, Holderness Sch., NH (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* Uglow takes such delight in her work that every page shimmers and whirls. On a mission to rescue neglected, radical English artists, such as Thomas Bewick (Nature's Engraver, 2007), she now richly and inquisitively portrays brainy and independent Sarah Losh (1786-1853). Uglow grew up in Cumbria, Losh's home territory, and knows well the wildly unconventional church Losh designed and built in the village of Wreay, a house of worship brimming with imagery drawn from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, all shaped by Losh's passion for fossils and science. Losh even helped craft the carved stone and wood vines, lotus flowers, dragon, butterflies, raven, bat, eagle, stork, and her favorite, the pinecone, an ancient symbol of regeneration, fertility, and inner enlightenment. What sort of Victorian Englishwoman would construct a pantheistic temple? Bright, willful, and soon motherless, young Losh was supported in her quest for education by her wealthy industrialist father (Uglow's history of the family fortune is fascinating) and progressive uncle. Losh deflected her suitors to live a liberated life with her beloved sister, whose death precipitated Losh's phenomenal surge of creativity. Uglow expertly sets Losh's singular story within a historical context as intricately detailed and vital as Losh's church as she shares her profound appreciation for this visionary and her defiant celebration of life and art. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist