In Byron's Wake

Starred review from August 27, 2018
In this splendid dual biography of Lord Byron’s wife and daughter, Seymour (Mary Shelley) brings these two brilliant, complex women to vivid life. Both women were cherished only children, endowed with strong wills and intellects. Lady Byron, née Annabella Milbanke, left the poet after only a year of marriage, subsequently building a reputation as a philanthropist and social reformer. Her daughter, Ada, inherited the wild, impetuous part of her father’s nature, and was plagued by ill health up to her early death at 36 (the same age as Byron at his death). Before this, Ada showed a skill for mathematics and a genius for theorizing, producing a visionary set of notes on the possibilities of inventor Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine” that presaged the rise of modern computers. Dramatically hovering over both women’s lives is the long shadow cast by Byron’s scandal-ridden life, in particular his incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and the existence of an alleged daughter; Lady Byron’s supposed knowledge of this affair during her marriage provided the peg on which critics debased her reputation after her death. While remaining historically rigorous, Seymour’s narrative reads like a superb, page-turning novel.

October 1, 2018
The tale of one of the most disastrous marriages in English literary history--and how it reverberated through generations to come.Prolific novelist and literary biographer Seymour (The Pity of War: England and Germany, Bitter Friends, Beloved Foes, 2014, etc.) returns to the familiar Romantic era ground she covered in her 2001 biography, Mary Shelley, with this wide-ranging dysfunctional family portrait. Raised as a beautiful, pampered, privileged social princess, Annabella Milbanke married the great poet Lord Byron with the most delusional of intentions: She would reform the rake who famously seduced anyone who didn't seduce him first. However, no sooner were they on their honeymoon than Byron brought his half sister, Augusta Leigh, into the game and all but made love to her under the nose of his naïve and oblivious bride. Annabella, who only dealt with the unthinkable when it became the unavoidable, fled within a year, taking along Ada, her newborn daughter by Byron. Her marriage made her vindictive and cruel; she could wield the unpleasant and unlawful facts as a cudgel against Byron and Augusta as well as their unfortunate daughter Elizabeth Medora. More than that, she raised and molded Ada by herself, with results that went well beyond her control. While she nurtured Ada's genius--she was the mathematical prodigy who became the explicator and promoter of Charles Babbage's groundbreaking Analytical Machine, the forerunner of the computer--Ada was every bit her father's daughter. The self-proclaimed "bride of science," she supplemented her marriage with affairs and a disastrous interest in racehorse gambling; she also bristled under the restraints of her tightfisted and domineering mother. Seymour's great achievement is the resourcefulness and diligence she brings to both Annabella and Ada, complex figures who alternately invite and test readers' sympathies. Their inner and outer lives--along with those of dozens of others who populate this tragic farce--are told with singular narrative skill.A top-notch biography.

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November 1, 2018

Seymour (visiting professor, Nottingham Trent Univ.; Mary Shelley) turns a critical eye to the women in Lord Byron's life. Anne Isabella "Annabella" Noel Milbanke (1792-1860), "one of the most coveted young women of the year," owing to her large dowry and inheritance, married the young poet; their brief union marred by cruelty and an affair between Byron and his half-sister. After the couple separated, Annabella ensured their daughter Ada never met her father. Ada, an astute mathematician, counted Charles Babbage as an academic mentor. Chosen to author an English translation of a French scientific article on his Analytical Engine machine, she hinted at the later invention of computers though the world "was not ready either for it or for her." Always susceptible to illness, she passed away at 36, just like her father. Seymour owns Thrumpton Hall, the ancestral home of Annabella and Ada, and laboriously documents the family history through private letters. However, an overemphasis on detail is this work's weakness, potentially overwhelming nonacademicians, with Jennifer Chiaverini's Enchantress of Numbers providing a more accessible version of Ada's life. VERDICT A dense biography that loses some of its entertainment through its epistolary style targeting researchers.--Jessica Bushore, Xenia, OH

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