Enchantress of Numbers

July 1, 2017

Leave it to Chiaverini, the New York Times best-selling author of numerous effective portrayals of historically significant women, to take on the redoubtable Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, Lord Byron's only legitimate child. Trained from the nursery in science and mathematics by her mathematician mother, determined that Ada not follow her father's wild ways, Ada became enthralled with Charles Babbage's calculating machine and is now regarded as the world's first computer programmer. Here she has secrets to learn about her estranged parents, too.

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September 15, 2017
Mother-daughter tension sets the stage for this closely researched portrait of Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of poet Lord Byron.Chiaverini's (Fates and Traitors, 2016, etc.) latest historical novel details Ada's struggles to please her mother, Lady Byron, nee Annabella Milbanke, who so feared that Ada would succumb to the influence of Byron's bad blood that she forbade the child from reading poetry or indulging in any flight of fancy. Annabelle's own turbulent marriage to Byron lasted less than a year. She worried that Byron suffered from either madness or, worse, moral corruption, and after discovering his incestuous liaison with his half sister, Augusta, she fled with 7-week-old Ada. Thus began Ada's lifelong struggle to please her mother by suppressing half her lineage. Chiaverini details Ada's trials and tribulations with her mother's jealous dismissal of nurses and governesses who dared to tell the girl fairy tales. The emotionally neglected child became a ticking time bomb, eager to rush into inappropriate intimacies. Ada nevertheless became a profoundly talented and imaginative mathematician. Cast as Ada's memoir, Chiaverini's novel uses lines from Byron's poetry as chapter titles, charting Ada's discovery of her own talents and acceptance of her father's influence. Eventually, Ada found her closest friends in Mary Somerville and Charles Babbage, both of whom encouraged her intellectual creativity, as did her supportive husband, William, Lord King. Yet as Ada's intellect brilliantly wed practical mathematics to poetic genius, her ambition was constantly undercut; even her beloved Babbage presumed she would subordinate her career to his work. Arguably the first person to conceive of computer programming--an idea inspired by watching looms--Ada should have been lauded for her contributions to mathematics and technology. Yet her mother's, her husband's, and her society's ideas about appropriate behavior for women suppressed her genius. A compelling yet heartbreaking homage to the mother of computer science.

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January 29, 2018
This intricate fictional memoir of Ada Lovelace, considered the first computer programmer, by Chiaverini (Fates and Traitors) combines biography with the style of a novel of manners. The novel opens with a lengthy prologue imagining the courtship and brief marriage of the rather odious George Gordon Lord Byron, the sixth Baron Byron, and the restrained Anne Isabella Milbanke, eleventh Baroness Wentworth. Shortly after the birth of their only child, Augusta Ada Byron, in 1815, the pair split and Byron left England, never to return or see his daughter again. Despite his absence, Ada credits the great poet with casting a shadow across her life, and her mother constantly searches for signs of Byron’s mania in her. Though Ada’s keen interest in mathematics is clear from almost the beginning, it is only her association with Charles Babbage that leads to her now-famous creation of the first ever computer program. Period fans will delight in the details of gowns, suitors, and rivals that fill the pages until Ada’s rapid romance with and then marriage to William, Lord King, who will eventually become the first Earl of Lovelace. Chiaverini’s novel is a wonderful blend of history and fiction, poetry and math.