In Byron's Wake - Paperback

by Miranda Seymour (Author)

A masterful portrait of two remarkable women, revealing how two turbulent lives were always haunted by the dangerously enchanting, quicksilver spirit of that extraordinary father whom Ada never knew: Lord Byron.

In 1815, the clever and courted Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824. 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. 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 the dawn of the modern computer age.During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unexpectedly sympathetic personality.Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter.

Author Biography

Miranda Seymour's previous books include Thrumpton Hall, A Memoir of Life in My Father's House (NYTBR Editor's Choice, winner of the 2008 PEN/Ackerley Award); Mary Shelley (Grove), Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Holt); and Ottoline Morrell: Life on a Grand Scale (FSG). She lives in England.