Read A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace Started the Computer Age for Free Online

it seems appropriate to call her now, as she was known by this name to most of the world) was successful in this quest, though Ada was never truly out of the public’s mind.
    Lady Byron had left the strange, wayward, selfish and fundamentally unhappy man she had mistakenly married. And now she found herself in a life she had never planned. Her entire upbringing and attitude to life had been focused on her at some point becoming a wife and a mother.
    Lady Byron went to be with her parents in Leicestershire, who at that time were staying at a country house in the village of Kirkby Mallory. Strange to say, despite her having left Byron, for a few weeks the still-married couple exchanged fond letters with each other. Byron seems to have expected that Annabella would soon return to him with Ada.
    And maybe that would have happened. But after a few weeks, during which Lady Byron had been reticent with her parents about why she had left Byron, there came a time – it’s not known when exactly this happened, but it would have been most likely some time in February 1816 – she told her parents about what had happened and just how Byron had behaved towards her. Her parents were furious and slowly turned her against him. She also received a note from Byron’s former lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, who proposed a meeting with Annabella.
    At this meeting, Lady Caroline told Annabella that Byron had committed incest with Augusta. Lady Caroline, not known for mincing her words, convinced Annabella of the truth, if she still needed convincing after the peculiar cohabitation arrangement at Six Mile Bottom. After Lady Caroline’s visit it was also clear beyond doubt that Augusta and Byron’s incest with each other had become widely known and discussed, and beyond the borders of Britain as well as within them. Even worse, Lady Caroline told Lady Byron that Byron had indulged in homosexual acts while at Harrow.
    There was only one respectable answer, and soon Lady Byron launched a legal suit against Byron for an official separation. As for Byron, he had the last laugh, in his poem Don Juan – written in ottava rima pentameters, whereas Childe Harolde’ s Pilgrimage had been written in Spenserian stanzas – with Donna Inez.
    Her favourite science was the mathematical,
    Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity;
    Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was attic all,
    Her serious sayings darken’d to sublimity;
    In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
    A prodigy – her morning dress was dimity [a sturdy curtain fabric]…
    By now desperate for cash after flunking the marriage option, Byron knew he had to sell his ancestral home in Nottinghamshire, Newstead Abbey to settle debts and for his living expenses abroad. But in fact Newstead was not sold until December 1817, when Byron was fortunate to get the colossal sum of £94,000 (today £94 million) for it from a Colonel Thomas Wildman, a wealthy military officer who had been a classmate of Byron’s at Harrow. Though his financial worries were much reduced (they were never completely resolved), it would be unfair to Byron, though, to say that he forgot about Ada once abroad. During the eight years between his departure from England (he never returned) and his death, he frequently wrote to Augusta to ask her to ask Lady Byron for particulars about Ada, such as her upbringing, the colour of her hair, and so on. But he had no contact with her, or thoughts about her upbringing.
    Lady Byron was adamant that Ada would be prudently educated. Most adults in the early nineteenth century regarded children as incomplete, ungrateful, savage adults – a view that Ada’s friend Charles Dickens would later challenge in his writings. Children were dressed like miniature versions of adults and children’s literature – such as it was – was meant for moral guidance. Lady Byron agreed whole-heartedly and was not going to sit by idly or let Ada mix much with other children who hadn’t been vetted. As