Ada Lovelace

An extraordinarily readable and compact biography of the Victorian mathematical genius Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron. Recent winner of Blue Peter’s award for Best Book with Facts, this neat little paperback illustrated with line drawings gives more than mere factual biographical details of the child prodigy and her domineering mother who separated from Lord Byron when Ada was still a baby. Lethbridge writes lyrically about Ada’s strange upbringing in which her father’s existence and poetry were never discussed, about her passion for mathematics and her longing to visit Newstead Abbey, once her father’s home. Her contribution to Babbage’s work on the Analytical Engine, the forerunner of the modern computer, is clearly explained, but we are also left with a memorable portrait of this eccentric and brilliant woman.