LADY BYRON AND HER DAUGHTERS

Anne Isabella Milbanke, always called Annabella, was actually more highborn than Lord Byron, as he was later to brag, and he called her the 'Princess of parallelograms' lovingly during his courtship, and snidely in his poetry after she would not return to his control. She was also a gifted mathematician and believed that science gave humanity the tools for coming as close to the secrets of creation as possible. She studied Euclid in the original, was a linguist devoted to literature, was a poet in a minor key who wrote 'Byronmania' satirising the women including her cousin Caroline Lamb who 'aped' Byron, hoping to attract attention at the London Waltz they all attended. The book is a startling revelation of Lady Byron's marriage and the untold story of her complex life as a single mother and progressive force. She transformed herself from a neglected wife into a figure of incredible resilience and social vision. After she and her infant child were cast out of their home, she was left to navigate the stifling and unsupportive social environment of Regency England. Far from a victim or an obstacle to Lord Byron's work, she was a rebel against the fashionable snobbery of her class, founding the first Infants School, and Co-Operative School in England. She supported the education of her precocious daughter Ada Lovelace, now recognised and lauded as a pioneer of computer science. She saved from death her 'adoptive daughter' Medora Leigh, the child of Lord Byron's incestuous affair with his sister. Lady Byron was adored by the younger abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe and many notable friends, yet her complex relationships with her family, including the sister Byron loved, runs like a live wire through this skilfully told and groundbreaking biography. Here she is rescued from undeserved oblivion in a biography which is a joy to read, often hilariously funny, brilliantly braiding together literature, history and psychology. 364pp, illus.