Enchantress of Numbers

By: Jennifer Chiaverini

Narrated by: Virginia Leishman

Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the fascinating life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace - Lord Byron's daughter, the world's first computer programmer, and a woman whose exceptional contributions to science and technology have been too long unsung.

The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. Estranged from Ada's father, who was infamously "mad, bad, and dangerous to know", Ada's mathematician mother is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of imagination - or, worse yet, passion or poetry - is promptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes.

When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life. Little does she realize that her delightful new friendship with inventor Charles Babbage - brilliant, charming, and occasionally curmudgeonly - will shape her destiny. Intrigued by the prototype of his first calculating machine, the Difference Engine, and enthralled by the plans for his even more advanced Analytical Engine, Ada resolves to help Babbage realize his extraordinary vision, unique in her understanding of how his invention could transform the world. All the while, she passionately studies mathematics - ignoring skeptics who consider it an unusual, even unhealthy pursuit for a woman - falls in love, discovers the shocking secrets behind her parents' estrangement, and comes to terms with the unquenchable fire of her imagination.

In Enchantress of Numbers, New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini unveils the passions, dreams, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largely unheralded pioneer in computing - a young woman who stepped out of her father's shadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the new technology that would shape the future.

©2017 Jennifer Chiaverini (P)2017 Recorded Books

Interesting Woman

I am amazed at this woman's life and what she accomplished . When you think of computers and how we analyze things, she was a forerunner of computer analytics today.

Interesting Woman

I enjoyed this book and admired the subject for wanting to live her own life.

So Good

Absolutely loved this book! Knew nothing of Ada Lovelace, and enjoyed this book so much. Another fabulous book by Jennifer Chiaverini!

Sins of the father

Lady Byron acted out her humiliation by Lord Byron upon her daughter. I struggled with listening, wanted to stop in disgust. Both Ada's parents were miserable people. This story is a biting satire of Lord Byron and of the English aristocracy of the period. My least favorite book by this author.

An amazing women

Found the Character of Ada Lovelace on "Victoria" and looked her up. She had a very interesting life that is worth reading about.

Numbers can be poetry.

What might the heroine have become if not for her mother? These two women, brilliant with number sciences, fight for recognition long before liberation in the 20th Century could help them. Their success is constrained by the times and the mother’s endless desire to arrange her daughter’s reputation. Well read and produced.

Enchantress of Numbers

This book is a wonderful historic novel! I learned a lot about Ada Lovelace and her father Lord Byron. Ada was amazing! She is the sweetest and the most extraordinary women who is just a Genius! Great story writing and the narrator is very good!! I highly recommend this book to all! 💜 Leslie😊

Very informative!

I had never even heard of Ada Lovelace before and was not very familiar with this time in history scientifically. This biography helped me understand more from a wealthy woman's perspective.

INFORMATIVE BACKGROUND LISTENING

If you have an interest in history, especially pertaining to computers and the poetry of Lord Byron, (An odd combination, I know.) then you will find this work interesting, or maybe even intriguing, though not truly entertaining. This is more a semi-nonfiction biography than an exciting fictional novel to lose yourself in.

I gave it three stars across the board mainly because it was not the engrossing historical fiction I had hoped for. Instead it is gentle retelling (with necessary fictional license) of the life of Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and the woman sometimes credited with constructing the first computer program - though in 1840 computers had not yet been invented. What she really did was devise an algorithm of such complexity that it could be viewed as a program. Her life was surprisingly complicated. First because she was the only legitimate daughter of the renown poet, Lord Byron, and secondly because she was far beyond her contemporaries (women or men) in the areas of intellect and expression.

The inclusion of Lady Lovelace's interactions with such prominent historical figures as Charles Babbage, Mary Somerville and Charles Dickens offered a new and interesting perspective on her life and underscored the strong waves of change that were sweeping through Britain on the verge of the Industrial Revolution. All in all, I did enjoy the narrative and it spurred me to do some additional research on the topics presented.

Not my bag, but entertaining and educational

Decent historical fiction. Well researched, well performed. The writing style didn't grab me, but that's more on me than the author.