Karla Jennings

ADA Byron Karla Jennings

The only legitimate child of the notorious poet Lord Byron, Ada Byron inherited her father's passion and her sadomasochistic mother's analytical mind. Ada collaborates with the surly Charles Babbage on the Difference Engine and seeks marital escape through laudanum, alcohol, gambling, adultery, and blackmail. Through her we experience the tempestuous Victorian age, from the royal court to the London slums. Ada Byron is the only legitimate child of the notorious poet Lord Byron. Like him she is passionate and adventurous, but she inherited her mother's analytical mind and love of purity. In her mother, Lady Byron, these qualities find release in sadomasochistic piety and domination. In Ada, they create a passion for mathematics. Mathematics is her first drug. It will not be her last. Isolated in the cold splendor of their Leicestershire estate, Lady Byron rules her daughter with devout intolerance, giving her an exceptional private education but no affection. After running away from home and falling dangerously ill, Ada makes her London debut, a fat ungainly girl who meets the surly inventor Charles Babbage. So begins one of history's oddest couples: the fiftyish widower who alienates almost everyone, and the teenaged aristocrat with an unladylike mathematical talent. They form a platonic but emotionally-charged friendship centered around Babbage's Difference Engine. Through their collaboration we enter the astonishing cultural and scientific upheaval of early Victorian England, a time when the hierarchy of king, lord, yeoman and serf was shattering, socialism was rising, factories were thrashing the agrarian life, and England was cracking its whip over much of the globe. Ada's circle includes a young Charles Dickens and scientists such as Michael Faraday. After a disastrous failed elopement, Ada rushes into marriage and finds herself trapped with a violent husband twice her age. Bearing children in quick succession, she seeks escape in laudanum, alcohol, gambling, adultery, and blackmail. She careens through the Victorian age's hypocrisy and grace as well as cataclysmic power struggles with her mother. Through her we experience nineteenth-century London, from the royal court to the ratting dens.