In Byron's Wake

Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron in 1815 and fled with their baby daughter, Ada Lovelace, the following year. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824. Ada was educated by some of the most learned minds in England and combined mathematics with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination. She died at 36, but her legacy as a passionate astronomer and computer pioneer continues to shape the lives and reputations of her father and her mother. Miranda Seymour's double biography reveals the ways in which Byron continued to shape their lives and reputations, revealing a deeply complex but unsuspectedly sympathetic personality.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 560 pages
\n Publication date: 07 February 2019
\n Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
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A Sunday Times Book of the Year, shortlisted for The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, this magnificent, highly readable double biography vividly brings these two driven, complicated women to life. The Financial Times calls it a gripping saga of a double-biography, while the Daily Mail praises it as a masterful portrait. The Times describes it as vastly enjoyable, and the Literary Review praises it as deeply absorbing and meticulously researched. The Oldie calls it a captivating tale.

In 1815, the clever, courted, and cherished Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, the future Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824, aged 36. The one thing he had asked his wife to do was to make sure that their daughter never became a poet.

Ada didn't. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron's little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. Educated by some of the most learned minds in England, she combined that scholarly discipline with a rebellious heart and a visionary imagination.

As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage's unbuilt calculating engine to predict, as nobody would do for another century, the dawn today of our modern computer age. When Ada died - like her father, she was only 36 - great things seemed still to lie ahead for her as a passionate astronomer.

Even while mired in debt from gambling and crippled by cancer, she was frenetically employing Faraday's experiments with light refraction to explore the analysis of distant stars. Drawing on fascinating new research, this is the definitive life of a remarkable woman who transcended the boundaries of her time and left an indelible mark on the world.

\n Weight: 404g\n
Dimension: 131 x 197 x 36 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781471138584\n \n