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The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter
The Barnes & Noble Review:
An almost perfect embodiment of the union of opposites -- in this case science and poetry -- Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, is best remembered among the cognoscenti for her namesake, the Department of Defense's computer language "Ada." This legacy is the result of her writings on Charles Babbage's plans for an "Analytical Engine," now recognized as the precursor to modern computers.
In The Bride of Science Benjamin Woolley links Ada's personal struggles to the larger context of historical change, creating a fascinating lens through which to view the incredible social disruption during the early years of the industrial revolution and the ambivalence these changes wrought.
An almost perfect embodiment of the union of opposites -- in this case science and poetry -- Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, is best remembered among the cognoscenti for her namesake, the Department of Defense's computer language "Ada." This legacy is the result of her writings on Charles Babbage's plans for an "Analytical Engine," now recognized as the precursor to modern computers.
In The Bride of Science Benjamin Woolley links Ada's personal struggles to the larger context of historical change, creating a fascinating lens through which to view the incredible social disruption during the early years of the industrial revolution and the ambivalence these changes wrought.
Ada's life spanned the years 1815 to 1852, during which the newly introduced rail lines and telegraph access made the power of technology a reality in people's lives. The Romantic movement was the backlash against those who would attempt to apply "scientific" thinking to every aspect of the human experience. As one of the Romantic movement's greatest prophets, Lord Byron's excessive indulgence of various illicit desires (one being particularly dangerous) led him to marry a woman who deluded herself into believing she could save him. Ada's mother, Annabella, was the dominant force in her life -- a self-righteous and self-serving woman who embraced the new virtues of rationality.
The marriage lasted barely long enough for Annabella to become pregnant, and she spent the rest of her life justifying the infamous separation from her celebrity husband. Annabella barred Byron from any contact with his daughter and put Ada on a strict regimen of moral and mathematical study to suppress any Byronic tendencies Ada may have inherited. To the public eye, Ada was a curiosity. Put upon in an entirely modern way, Ada was famous from the day she was born. Although Ada took up science with enthusiasm, her Byronic eccentricities and passions were not extinguished by logic. Like her father, Ada looked to marriage to save her, but her husband, the future Earl of Lovelace, was not able to control her in the end.
As an adult, Ada set out to find her mission, which she hoped would combine her two halves, and prove that the product of science and poetry would produce genius, not a monstrosity. Her work with Babbage was one attempt at a "poetical science" requiring imagination and rigor. She also indulged in many of the other popular ideas of the day, such as phrenology and mesmerism, with a more discerning eye than most. At the end of her life, she turned to the new work being done with that mysterious force, electricity, in the hopes of finding a molecular basis in the human nervous system to explain emotions. She was plagued by this time with both physical and mental disorders, and so also hoped to find some personal salvation in this quest. But her Byronic nature was getting stronger in the form of an affair and gambling addiction (there is an interesting speculation that she tried to develop a mathematical formula to beat the odds), and she finally succumbed to illness. In the end she requested to be buried next to the father she never knew in life. The Bride of Science is a wonderful portrait of the struggle between reason and passion.
--Laura Wood, Science & Nature Editor
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
February 12, 2018
This book is very difficult for me to rate or review. I did enjoy reading it, but for a biography of Ada Lovelace it sure did not have a lot of Ada in it.
The first third of the book is devoted exclusively to the relationship of her parents - how they met, their courtship, their short marriage and separation. There is no glimpse of Ada until the second third of the book, where we have some accounts of her youth and - more notably - of her education. More than that, however, we get mini-biographies of the persons she met and who had some kind of impact on her, as well as historical context. Then the final third (which also finally contains descriptions of her scientific work) mostly really deals with Ada herself.
I understand that the relationship between her parents is important to understand her upbringing, but still I do not think that this message needs a third of the book and several of Byron's poems to be conveyed convincingly (for my taste, there is too many of Byron's poems and too little of Ada's science. It seems obvious that Woolley is a fan of Byron's, but this book is supposed to be about his daughter who he never really met!). If this lack of Ada in this book is because there is just not a lot of information about her available, Woolley does not a good job in explaining this matter. Furthermore, a lot of the story feels like he is wildly speculating, because he does not often explain where he gets his ideas from. I am sure that he did extensive research for this book, but he does not always clearly distinguish facts from speculation.
I assume that this book is a very nice read if you are interested in the historical person Ada Lovelace, British aristocrat and daughter of Lord Byron. If you are more interested in the scientist Ada Lovelace and her mathematical background, this book is slightly disappointing.
The first third of the book is devoted exclusively to the relationship of her parents - how they met, their courtship, their short marriage and separation. There is no glimpse of Ada until the second third of the book, where we have some accounts of her youth and - more notably - of her education. More than that, however, we get mini-biographies of the persons she met and who had some kind of impact on her, as well as historical context. Then the final third (which also finally contains descriptions of her scientific work) mostly really deals with Ada herself.
I understand that the relationship between her parents is important to understand her upbringing, but still I do not think that this message needs a third of the book and several of Byron's poems to be conveyed convincingly (for my taste, there is too many of Byron's poems and too little of Ada's science. It seems obvious that Woolley is a fan of Byron's, but this book is supposed to be about his daughter who he never really met!). If this lack of Ada in this book is because there is just not a lot of information about her available, Woolley does not a good job in explaining this matter. Furthermore, a lot of the story feels like he is wildly speculating, because he does not often explain where he gets his ideas from. I am sure that he did extensive research for this book, but he does not always clearly distinguish facts from speculation.
I assume that this book is a very nice read if you are interested in the historical person Ada Lovelace, British aristocrat and daughter of Lord Byron. If you are more interested in the scientist Ada Lovelace and her mathematical background, this book is slightly disappointing.
October 9, 2018
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, poet and lover extraordinaire. Her mother raised her hoping that she wouldn't inherit her father's debauched ways and so Ada was schooled in logic and reason, science and mathematics. Today we remember Ada for being the first computer programmer in an age where there were no computers and the engineering didn't exist to build one. Unfortunately, Ada lived in the Victorian era where the world was advancing but women's lives were not. This is a well-written biography of an interesting woman who, I am sure, would be absolutely thrilled with the technology of the 21st century.
March 30, 2020
Ada Lovelace, daughter of the great poet Lord Byron, godmother of the computer age, is the subject of Benjamin Woolley's 1999 biography. Or, is, notionally, at least. Woolley's book is as much about the incredible era in which Ada lived, taking in everything from leaps in technology from telegraphy and trains to the birth of psychology. Woolley often ties those into Ada herself, including her interest and skepticism in the field of mesmerism, for example, but other times the book feels oddly unfocused on its subject matter. Indeed, the first 100 pages or so focuses almost exclusively on Ada's parents: Lord Byron and his soon to be estranged wife Annabella, the latter of who had a looming presence in her daughter's wife. While important to understanding Ada's life, one wonders if spending nearly a third of the page count on it before she's even born was a smart decision.
That said, when the book is focused on Ada herself, it's fascinating stuff. We follow her encounters with the likes of Farraday and, of course, Babbage, and how the latter's work helped put her in the right position for writing what we now recognize as among the world's first computer programs. Woolley also presents a dynamic portrait of the woman herself, often torn between the head and the heart, with a reckless streak late in her life reminiscent of her father. It's an intriguing (if at times incomplete) portrait of a remarkable, though sadly short-lived, woman living in a most incredible time.
That said, when the book is focused on Ada herself, it's fascinating stuff. We follow her encounters with the likes of Farraday and, of course, Babbage, and how the latter's work helped put her in the right position for writing what we now recognize as among the world's first computer programs. Woolley also presents a dynamic portrait of the woman herself, often torn between the head and the heart, with a reckless streak late in her life reminiscent of her father. It's an intriguing (if at times incomplete) portrait of a remarkable, though sadly short-lived, woman living in a most incredible time.
May 5, 2015
Ugh. i abandoned at 20% and feel I should be rewarded for getting that far. Prose that is aiming t9 be flowertly or like Victorian writing but is turgid & verbiose.
Tedious narrative -this man can't tell a story. Unengaging. And, supposedly a biography of Ada Lovelace, the first 20% is about her father, Byron, an odious man whose poems are deservedly out of fashion now & irrelevant.
I don't think this writer has any sympathy for or insight into women, so I have no further wish to read this book.
Tedious narrative -this man can't tell a story. Unengaging. And, supposedly a biography of Ada Lovelace, the first 20% is about her father, Byron, an odious man whose poems are deservedly out of fashion now & irrelevant.
I don't think this writer has any sympathy for or insight into women, so I have no further wish to read this book.
June 29, 2021
Possibly the worst biography I've ever read. This guy obviously cannot give two craps about Ada Lovelace, but no one wanted to pay him to write a book about all the men in her life so he wrote it anyway.
September 26, 2021
This took an effort to read. Mostly it was a lot of facts, but little story. A couple of chapters have good insight into what Ada actually did and thought, but mostly the book was quite boring to read, despite the interesting subject.
January 24, 2011
This was more of a gossip sheet about Ada Lovelace than an actual biography. It was as if Woolley was just rehashing all the gossip about Byron and Ada and their associates.
May 30, 2015
The amazing story, stranger and richer than most fiction, about the remarkable daughter of the "bad, mad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, as notorious in his time for his quasi-rock-star embodiment of the Romantic movement and the scandals about his private life as for his poetry. (That's saying quite a bit, since Byron's poetry was devoured all over Europe. Even so, his private life occasionally scooped it.)
Ada Lovelace, his daughter, survived a tumultuous upbringing, an absent father, an almost pathologically embittered mother --with good reason, since she had good reason to believe her husband had cheated on her repeatedly, with members of both sexes and his own half-sister. Even so, it seems excessive that, following the divorce, Ada wasn't allowed even to see a portrait of her father until her 20th birthday.
Her mother decided to drive the "madness of poetry" out of her daughter through a dry and exhaustive regimen of mathematics and science. But Ada had an instinctive understanding of math (amounting to love), and became one of the foremost mathematicians of her age. Once she escaped her mother's domination, her father's nature also surfaced, and for much of her life she sought a middle ground between the rationality of science and the beliefs of the Romantics.
She's probably best-known for writing the world's first computer language, for Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. In the 1950s the U.S. Department of Defense named an early (and very buggy) modern computer language ADA in her honor.
Ada Lovelace, his daughter, survived a tumultuous upbringing, an absent father, an almost pathologically embittered mother --with good reason, since she had good reason to believe her husband had cheated on her repeatedly, with members of both sexes and his own half-sister. Even so, it seems excessive that, following the divorce, Ada wasn't allowed even to see a portrait of her father until her 20th birthday.
Her mother decided to drive the "madness of poetry" out of her daughter through a dry and exhaustive regimen of mathematics and science. But Ada had an instinctive understanding of math (amounting to love), and became one of the foremost mathematicians of her age. Once she escaped her mother's domination, her father's nature also surfaced, and for much of her life she sought a middle ground between the rationality of science and the beliefs of the Romantics.
She's probably best-known for writing the world's first computer language, for Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. In the 1950s the U.S. Department of Defense named an early (and very buggy) modern computer language ADA in her honor.
February 28, 2016
My favorite part in The Bride of Science was before he gets to the so-called ‘point’ and starts describing the life of Byron’s daughter – it was the impossible, convoluted relationship between her parents and their fascinating, troubled personalities that interested me most. Woolley is a fine writer, and he told this bit of history with the eye of a novelist for plot and character, yet it looks like he didn’t have enough information about Ada herself. Where he did have the knowledge and material – with her parents – his work shone. With Ada it was more of a speculation and instead of immersing myself in her life I found myself mostly enjoying the background story of England in 19th century, with all the excitement of this time that thrived on big ideas (but sometimes the reading was tedious, as when Woolley discussed in detail Ada’s work as a mathematician). This, too, was a story well told yet I was left with the feeling that I’d like to read more works by this author, but only where he has enough concrete material to draw on.
February 15, 2017
Oh Ada, I do love you. This biography only helped me on my downhill journey to falling in love with Ada - from reading a chapter about her in a book about dangerous women, to a graphic novel about her and Babbage, to an unimpressive biography about her that focussed too much on Babbage. I started this skeptically, thinking "it'll just talk endlessly about Babbage" and "there's bound to be barely any info about her life once she starts on her scientific work", bases solely on the last biography about her I read. So, needless to say, I was blown away by this. Woolley has written a truly wonderful biography that shows us how wonderful Ada is.
Ada was always going to have an interesting life, being the daughter of the infamous Lord Byron signed her up for a lifetime of fame before she was born. But she was brilliant in her own right. I love the thought that her mother tried so hard to stamp out any Byronic behaviour in her daughter, but, by the end of Ada's life, had failed miserably, as she truly became her father's daughter.
Ada was always going to have an interesting life, being the daughter of the infamous Lord Byron signed her up for a lifetime of fame before she was born. But she was brilliant in her own right. I love the thought that her mother tried so hard to stamp out any Byronic behaviour in her daughter, but, by the end of Ada's life, had failed miserably, as she truly became her father's daughter.
March 5, 2010
Live theatre makes me nervous; melodrama brings out the worst in me. Which is why I think I *really* didn't enjoy this book, even though I wanted to.
Hidden deep in the bowels of this twisted and floridly written tale however was some useful information. Woolley offers a gentle corrective to the notion of Lovelace as the worlds first computer programmer; her maths was actually not very strong, her approach to science more metaphysical than rational. Woolley also makes the interesting observation that the potential in Babbage's creations that Lovelace saw and could articulate was completely un-understandable at that time, as if someone started talking about natural selection 100 years before Darwin.
Hidden deep in the bowels of this twisted and floridly written tale however was some useful information. Woolley offers a gentle corrective to the notion of Lovelace as the worlds first computer programmer; her maths was actually not very strong, her approach to science more metaphysical than rational. Woolley also makes the interesting observation that the potential in Babbage's creations that Lovelace saw and could articulate was completely un-understandable at that time, as if someone started talking about natural selection 100 years before Darwin.
October 20, 2019
The title of the book is excellent. "Religion to me is science, and science is religion," she wrote. And "I am more than ever the bride of science". Which suggests both a special bond and also some distance to the object of devotion. She always had mentors guiding her, Mary Somerville, de Morgan, Babbage. And when she felt the desire to learn more about electricity she would just ask Michael Farraday to be her Tutor. (He could not oblige, unfortunately.)
It is very easy to over- and to underestimate her real contribution to science. At least whereas Mary Somerville, thought she was incapable of original thought because of her sex, Ada was convinced of her genius.
Ada is thought of as the first programmer, but apparently, she made some blunder in the translation of the work that made her famous – through her additional notes. (She translated a typo which resulted in cosinus instead of case.)
The biography is solid but not overwhelming. Ada makes her first appearance on page 69. The author seemed to be happiest when writing about her father. Or her mother Annabella or the "evil" aunt Augusta. Much of the story deals with the daughter of the relationship between Byron and her sister. A bit too much, for my taste. Interesting that is was Harriet Beecher Stowe who first published books about the scandal.
(Another interesting question why was Byron so popular? Wooley compares his funeral to that of Princess Diana. And he asks us to imagine Lisa-Marie Presley having written a book on quantum physics.)
She married one William King (and another of her mentors was called William King, the one who told her to dive into mathematics to overcome her depression.) Not after an unsuccessful eloping. Three kids. A "reworking" of a Schiller ballad. A book in the making (maybe), some review. She played the harp. Betted on horses (was in debt by more than 3000 Pounds. She had only 300 pounds "pin" money. There was some love affair. Dickens read her from her favorite book "Dombey &Son".
Died with 37.
7/10
It is very easy to over- and to underestimate her real contribution to science. At least whereas Mary Somerville, thought she was incapable of original thought because of her sex, Ada was convinced of her genius.
Ada is thought of as the first programmer, but apparently, she made some blunder in the translation of the work that made her famous – through her additional notes. (She translated a typo which resulted in cosinus instead of case.)
The biography is solid but not overwhelming. Ada makes her first appearance on page 69. The author seemed to be happiest when writing about her father. Or her mother Annabella or the "evil" aunt Augusta. Much of the story deals with the daughter of the relationship between Byron and her sister. A bit too much, for my taste. Interesting that is was Harriet Beecher Stowe who first published books about the scandal.
(Another interesting question why was Byron so popular? Wooley compares his funeral to that of Princess Diana. And he asks us to imagine Lisa-Marie Presley having written a book on quantum physics.)
She married one William King (and another of her mentors was called William King, the one who told her to dive into mathematics to overcome her depression.) Not after an unsuccessful eloping. Three kids. A "reworking" of a Schiller ballad. A book in the making (maybe), some review. She played the harp. Betted on horses (was in debt by more than 3000 Pounds. She had only 300 pounds "pin" money. There was some love affair. Dickens read her from her favorite book "Dombey &Son".
Died with 37.
7/10
February 11, 2025
This book was...good enough, for what it was, I guess, but it left me relatively bored. The fact that roughly the first third of the book was about Ada Lovelace's mother and her relationship with Lord Byron is perhaps representative of the degree to which this was more a book about her family than her career, and I just couldn't bring myself to care about much of what Benjamin Woolley has to say about that topic.
August 27, 2025
I really wanted to like this book. And the first third was extremely interesting to me because I did not know much about Lord Byron or his relationship to his so-called family. But then the book veered off. It was hard to keep all the characters straight as they were all introduced in passing, and the organization of the book was poor. Ada was not talking to her husband and then they were on vacation together. Also, there was an awful lot of quotation of Byron‘s poems, which did not interest me.
February 25, 2018
This book certainly helped me to put Ada's life in a larger perspective-- I was surprised to find how little emphasis was put on her work with Babbage and his Analytical Engine. The breadth and variety of Ada's experiences leads to quite a long biography, with the amount of time devoted to each part of her life dependent not just on the interest of the biographer but also largely on the amount of remaining documentation. Overall, I thought it was pretty well balanced. When starting the book it seemed at first that too much time was spent with her parents, but as I continued it became clear what an enormous effect their separation and Lord Byron's celebrity had on Ada throughout her life, and in retrospect I think it was page space well spent.
I thought Woolley did a good job of transporting the reader into the historical time period and Ada's mentality specifically -- for example, once he mentions that Ada called her mother's cadre of morally acceptable friends "the Furies", they are never referred to as anything else. He gives a lot of good background on certain fads and technological developments that shaped the era, though sometimes to the point of straying a little too far from Ada herself. Additionally I think that his face-value use of the idea of "hysteria" was accurate to Ada's own conception of herself but could have used some of that historical context treatment.
I thought Woolley did a good job of transporting the reader into the historical time period and Ada's mentality specifically -- for example, once he mentions that Ada called her mother's cadre of morally acceptable friends "the Furies", they are never referred to as anything else. He gives a lot of good background on certain fads and technological developments that shaped the era, though sometimes to the point of straying a little too far from Ada herself. Additionally I think that his face-value use of the idea of "hysteria" was accurate to Ada's own conception of herself but could have used some of that historical context treatment.
March 7, 2018
After watching Victoria on PBS I wanted to know more about Ada Lovelace, so I got two books: Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger and The Bride of Science by Benjamin Woolley. Well, three, actually-I also got Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine by Laurie Wallmark, but that one's a children's book.
If you want an unblemished view of Ada, get Ada's Algorithm. The author goes to great lengths to tell you half truths, conceal the nasty bits, and call everyone else around her "pedantic." She's nothing short of a genius and her legacy will live forever.
If you want more of a backstory beginning with her parents and covering all sorts of grey areas, get Bride of Science, but you'll probably be disappointed to learn she was a painfully flawed human being who seemed to be up to every possible thing she could get her hands on, her "marriage" to science adding up to little more than a bit of a footnote.
I imagine the truth to be somewhere in between, but was unable to find a better book. If you're on the fence, Bride of Science seems to have been exhaustively researched whereas Ada's Algorithm feels more like a personal opinion with lots of copy/pasting of poems and letters he then interprets as he sees fit.
If you want an unblemished view of Ada, get Ada's Algorithm. The author goes to great lengths to tell you half truths, conceal the nasty bits, and call everyone else around her "pedantic." She's nothing short of a genius and her legacy will live forever.
If you want more of a backstory beginning with her parents and covering all sorts of grey areas, get Bride of Science, but you'll probably be disappointed to learn she was a painfully flawed human being who seemed to be up to every possible thing she could get her hands on, her "marriage" to science adding up to little more than a bit of a footnote.
I imagine the truth to be somewhere in between, but was unable to find a better book. If you're on the fence, Bride of Science seems to have been exhaustively researched whereas Ada's Algorithm feels more like a personal opinion with lots of copy/pasting of poems and letters he then interprets as he sees fit.
November 1, 2024
This is a well researched book written in an engaging way. My issue is that I expected most of it to be about Ada, but very little was about her specifically until chapter 8 of 10. I get the impression that the author really, really wanted to write about Bryron instead. Or Annabella, Ada's mother. Or Babbage. Or mesmerism. Or Coleridge and Wordsworth. Or...
August 24, 2019
Interesting, absorbing and seemingly well balanced account of Ada's life and why she deserves to be remembered when viewed in her historical context and the background of the Regency then Victorian eras.
February 28, 2022
Very interesting story collected for a thick account of Ada Byron's life.
Her scientific mind, and her friends (including Babbage), were her science associates.
So lovely to take a stroll thru a high=society family in the Victorian days of the UK.
Her scientific mind, and her friends (including Babbage), were her science associates.
So lovely to take a stroll thru a high=society family in the Victorian days of the UK.
December 12, 2023
Life is too short for bad books. I can't even be bothered to gift this to a charity store. I'm never going to finish it. It's getting recycled. There has to be a good Ada Lovelace biography out there. This is not it.
August 27, 2019
Totally rad
January 15, 2024
This historical look at the life of Ada Lovelace read like a Victorian Trash Novel, and I loved it!
I read it many years ago. I don't remember the date.
I read it many years ago. I don't remember the date.
March 19, 2012
I originally read this a good while back, and I re-read it as part of my research for my current book, which has a heroine who is also a mathematician and was in part inspired by Ada Byron.
Ada was born in 1815 and never knew her famous father. She came into adulthood just as the Romantic movement began to lose its influence and the fascination with all things mechanical we associate with the Victorian age began to take over. Her early interest in mathematics was deliberately cultivated by her (slightly mad) mother, who wished to teach Ada the power of logic and rationalism in order to counter the potentially harmful impact of her imagination, lest she become as wild as her father. Anabella (Ada's mother, Byron's wife), is understandably concerned about Ada's character given that by this time she knew some pretty horrendous stuff about Byron (she most likely knew he was bi-sexual and almost certainly knew about his incestuous relationship with his sister). But the extreme measures Anabella takes to secure a 'straight' character for her child really make you questions the mother's sanity. I felt very sory for Ada, I loathed Anabella, but then I realised about half way through this biography that much of this was my being directed by the author.
Which is my main gripe about this book. Fascinating, well-reasearched and on the whole well-written, Woolley really does go overboard on his character assasination of Anabella. In fact, for much of the book it is Anabella and not Ada who is the subject. This might well be because there's not a lot of material about Ada. This fact would explain the large number of words devoted to other mini-bios (such as Babbage) and to Byron and his poetry (of which there was far too much in my view - this wasn't a Byron bio - which is my other gripe. I was left feeling that it would have been better to describe this as a book about Byron's world and his legacy as opposed to a bio of his daughter.
Despite all that, this is a good read, and it gave me lots of good research material. But you really need to buy in to wanting to know more about the cult of Byron before you pick it up.
Ada was born in 1815 and never knew her famous father. She came into adulthood just as the Romantic movement began to lose its influence and the fascination with all things mechanical we associate with the Victorian age began to take over. Her early interest in mathematics was deliberately cultivated by her (slightly mad) mother, who wished to teach Ada the power of logic and rationalism in order to counter the potentially harmful impact of her imagination, lest she become as wild as her father. Anabella (Ada's mother, Byron's wife), is understandably concerned about Ada's character given that by this time she knew some pretty horrendous stuff about Byron (she most likely knew he was bi-sexual and almost certainly knew about his incestuous relationship with his sister). But the extreme measures Anabella takes to secure a 'straight' character for her child really make you questions the mother's sanity. I felt very sory for Ada, I loathed Anabella, but then I realised about half way through this biography that much of this was my being directed by the author.
Which is my main gripe about this book. Fascinating, well-reasearched and on the whole well-written, Woolley really does go overboard on his character assasination of Anabella. In fact, for much of the book it is Anabella and not Ada who is the subject. This might well be because there's not a lot of material about Ada. This fact would explain the large number of words devoted to other mini-bios (such as Babbage) and to Byron and his poetry (of which there was far too much in my view - this wasn't a Byron bio - which is my other gripe. I was left feeling that it would have been better to describe this as a book about Byron's world and his legacy as opposed to a bio of his daughter.
Despite all that, this is a good read, and it gave me lots of good research material. But you really need to buy in to wanting to know more about the cult of Byron before you pick it up.
August 29, 2013
Although little is known about Ada Lovelace, Woolley writes a very comprehensive biography of her life and work. Beginning with her mother's marriage to Lord Byron and the subsequent celebrity scandal of their "Separation" the book moves easily through Bryon's perversity and Annabella's disappointment with her attempts to reform him to her attempts to prevent her daughter's downfall. Starting from birth, Ada is not allowed to read her father's poetry or gaze on his likeness but is instead fed a strict curriculum of science and math in hopes it will suppress any of the horrible Byronic imagination and tendencies she might have inherited from her father. At twenty she is shown the infamous Byron portrait and, thankfully, reacts indifferently. Soon she's married and with her connections becomes fascinated with Babbage's work on his Difference Engine. One thing leads to another and suddenly she's writing notes for a manuscript describing his new, never-to-be-produced, Analytical Engine. As a woman this is almost unprecedented, so there's a little tussle over who will sign the manuscript(s) and whether she will receive public recognition for her work. Unfortunately, this becomes the highlight of her professional life as her health deteriorates and her mother interferes due to a gambling problem she develops late in life.
Overall, a long but engaging read on the level of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Woolley does attempt to introduce arguments against revering Ada so highly in the world of computer programming as most of her writing was theoretical but he doesn't seem committed to examining them beyond acknowledging that Ada wasn't great at math. He also tends to vilify her mother, Annabella, whose strict regime appears to stunt Ada's moral and emotional growth later in life. But it does read like fiction most of the time, so I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about smart women of the Victorian era.
Overall, a long but engaging read on the level of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Woolley does attempt to introduce arguments against revering Ada so highly in the world of computer programming as most of her writing was theoretical but he doesn't seem committed to examining them beyond acknowledging that Ada wasn't great at math. He also tends to vilify her mother, Annabella, whose strict regime appears to stunt Ada's moral and emotional growth later in life. But it does read like fiction most of the time, so I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about smart women of the Victorian era.
June 18, 2016
An interesting look at the life of a woman who is mostly recognised today for her impact on the world of computing. While Ada Lovelace is often regarded as the first programmer, for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, Woolley pulls back from this claim, saying that Babbage himself had written such "programs" as well and that Ada's mathematics wasn't great. But this book is about much more than her contributions to computing; it pulls back and looks at her life in the context of a rapidly changing world and where science and art were in the process of being torn apart.
Woolley makes a lot of Ada's parentage. Indeed, the first two chapters are entirely spent on telling of how Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron, the poet. He portrays Annabella as a cold, analytical woman, contrasts her to the hot-blooded poet and then considers what would happen in the fusion of these two people.
To be honest, while the book is very readable, it's a bit soap-opera-y too. Woolley does go on a bit about Ada's split heritage and how her artistic side was suppressed by her mother. He also seems to be "on Byron's side" for most of the book (despite the fact he dies in Ada's childhood and never got to see his daughter beyond infancy) and portrays Annabella in a fairly negative light, being a controlling influence on Ada throughout her life. Without going back to the primary sources it's difficult to know how accurate this portrayal is but I instinctively dislike it in what should be a work of fact. However, to balance that, the book is very readable and provides a decent introduction to someone I've known about for so long (my first programming language at University was Ada) but knew very little about.
Woolley makes a lot of Ada's parentage. Indeed, the first two chapters are entirely spent on telling of how Annabella Milbanke married Lord Byron, the poet. He portrays Annabella as a cold, analytical woman, contrasts her to the hot-blooded poet and then considers what would happen in the fusion of these two people.
To be honest, while the book is very readable, it's a bit soap-opera-y too. Woolley does go on a bit about Ada's split heritage and how her artistic side was suppressed by her mother. He also seems to be "on Byron's side" for most of the book (despite the fact he dies in Ada's childhood and never got to see his daughter beyond infancy) and portrays Annabella in a fairly negative light, being a controlling influence on Ada throughout her life. Without going back to the primary sources it's difficult to know how accurate this portrayal is but I instinctively dislike it in what should be a work of fact. However, to balance that, the book is very readable and provides a decent introduction to someone I've known about for so long (my first programming language at University was Ada) but knew very little about.
June 27, 2012
Lord Byron is one of the most celebre poets in the 19th century England. When he married the calculating Anabella, they shared a romantic period that ended violently. Thier daughter, Ada Byron, had to live with the public exposure of this separation. Under her vigilant mother, her only scape was the study of sciences, but the poetic spirit of her father also lived in her.
This book does a good job portraiting the character od Ada Byron, her difficult life and his most important achievements, as weel as the people that surronded her and influenced her life. The writing style is also easy to follow, makes you be intersted on the story. Overall, I really enjoyed reading it.
This book does a good job portraiting the character od Ada Byron, her difficult life and his most important achievements, as weel as the people that surronded her and influenced her life. The writing style is also easy to follow, makes you be intersted on the story. Overall, I really enjoyed reading it.
September 26, 2014
I was struck by the celebrity lifestyle that Byron and his family led, and how the combination of fortune and constant presence in the public eye had the same kinds of warping effects that it does on celebrities today.
His daughter Ada was a mathematician, but she really struck me more as a science fiction and fantasy fan-- she liked the ideas, the possibilities, the philosophical puzzles, the lifestyle, but not so much the hard work of actually doing math or science. (I say "fantasy" because she also really liked faeries and acting like she was one of them.)
His daughter Ada was a mathematician, but she really struck me more as a science fiction and fantasy fan-- she liked the ideas, the possibilities, the philosophical puzzles, the lifestyle, but not so much the hard work of actually doing math or science. (I say "fantasy" because she also really liked faeries and acting like she was one of them.)
September 28, 2015
Reasonable read about a figure for whom so much evidence was destroyed after her death. I felt the author may have been more successful if he had focused instead on the larger theme of the scientific/romantic clash. As it is, the book jumps about rather a lot and I felt that the various strands within it did not completely come together satisfactorily. Despite that, Ada remains a fascinating and unusual woman and this is a decent read for someone like myself with no prior knowledge about her life.
July 29, 2015
I didn't love this but I didn't hate it either. The tone grated at times and the author seemed intermittently judgmental and not so much about Ada and her work as her parents and their influence on her. While the framing device of Byron/Romanticism/emotional & spiritual life vs Annabella/science/rational & moral way of life was useful to introduce readers to the social, economic and technological upheavals of the era, it was also rather stretched in some instances as it related to Ada'a life.
April 4, 2007
A sometimes woolly (sic) account of Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace, known to some as the world's first computer programmer. There's a good deal of interesting reading on Byron and his liaison with Ada's mother, although it left me with a feeling that it was focusing too much on Ada and her family/upbringing and not enough on her own achievements.
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