Whitbourn, James, ‘Ada’, for soprano, alto, tenor, bass choir and piano (Chester, Chester Music, 2015). Commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ada Lovelace; words by Lord Byron.
Wolfram, Stephen, Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People (Illinois, Wolfram Media, 2016).
Woolley, Benjamin, The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter (London, Pan Macmillan, 2015).
Lord Byron
Austin, Alfred, A Vindication of Lord Byron (London, Chapman & Hall, 1869).
Edgcumbe, Richard, Byron: The Last Phase (London, John Murray, 1909; Hamburg, Severus, 2012).
Eisler, Benita, Byron (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1999).
Grosskurth, Phyllis, Byron: The Flawed Angel (Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
Jeaffreson, John Cordy, The Real Lord Byron (London, Hurst & Blackett, 1883).
MacCarthy, Fiona, Byron, Life and Legend (London, John Murray, 2002).
Marchand, Leslie, Byron: A Portrait 3 vols (London, John Murray, 1957).
—Byron’s Letters & Journals, 13 vols (John Murray, 1973–94). Moore, Thomas, Life and Letters of Lord Byron, 2 vols (London, John Murray, 1830; 1831; 1873). The 1831 edition contains Lady Byron’s ‘Remarks’.
Prothero, Rowland (ed.), The Works of Byron: Letters and Journals, 6 vols (London, John Murray, 1898–1902). This contains a great deal of useful additional information not published by Marchand.
Walker, Violet, The House of Byron (Shrewsbury, Quiller Press, 1988). Only for those who are interested in Byron’s antecedents (the family tree is the most extensive I have seen) and would like to know more about Ada’s paternal lineage.
Other useful books to consult
Bakewell, Michael and Melissa, Augusta Leigh: Byron’s Half-sister, A Biography (London, Chatto & Windus, 2000).
David, Deirdre, Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy (New York, Cornell University Press, 1987).
Fox, Celina (ed.) London: World City 1800–1840 (London, Yale University Press, 1992).
Gunn, Peter, My Dearest Augusta (London, Bodley Head, 1968).
Hobhouse, John Cam, Baron Broughton, Recollections of a Long Life (London, John Murray, 1910).
Holmes, Richard, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London, HarperPress, 2009).
Origo, Iris, The Last Attachment (London, John Murray, 1949).
Secord, James A., Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (London, Chicago University Press, 2000).
Trevanion, Henry The Influence of Apathy (unknown publisher, London, 1827).
Winstone, H. V., Lady Anne Blunt: A Biography (Gloucester, Barzan, 2003).
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
BL –
British Library
BL&J –
Byron’s Letters & Journals (ed. by Leslie Marchand)
CRL –
Cadbury Research Library (University of Birmingham)
DLM –
Doris Langley Moore (Archive of transcriptions and notes in private collection)
HRC –
Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas
LKC –
Locke King Collection (Brooklands Museum). The papers identified in these notes are from boxes 9 and 10
MSBY –
Somerville Papers (Bodleian Library)
NLS –
National Library of Scotland (Murray Papers, still being catalogued for reference)
NYPL –
New York Public Library (Berg Collection)
WP –
Wentworth Papers (British Library)
Where no source is provided in these notes, the originals are in the catalogued and extensive Lovelace Byron Papers (Dep. Lovelace Byron) held by the Bodleian Library by permission of the present Lord Lytton and initially placed on loan by Lord Lytton’s father.
Quotations from Hobhouse’s Diary are always connected to the late Peter Cochran’s excellent online edition (https://petercochran.wordpress.com/hobhouses-diary/). The original diaries can be found at BL, Add MS 56532–5 and Berg Collection volumes 1 and 2 (New York Public Library).
The letters from Lady Anne Blunt to her mother, grandmother and brothers are in WP, Add MS 54090–540097.
AAB; AAK; AAL –
mark the change of status from Augusta Ada Byron (1815–), to Augusta Ada King (1835–), to Augusta Ada Lovelace (1838–52)
AIK; AINK; AB –
mark the change from Lady Annabella King (Ada’s daughter), to Annabella Noel King (1860–), to Lady Anne Blunt (1869–1917)
AL –
Augusta Leigh
BO –
Byron, Viscount Ockham (Ada’s eldest son)
RGK; RW; RL –
mark the change from Lord Ralph Gordon King (1839–) to Baron Wentworth (1862–), to 2nd Earl of Lovelace (1893–1906)
EML –
Elizabeth Medora Leigh
AIM; AIB; AINB –
mark the change of status from Anne Isabella Milbanke (1792–), to Anne Isabella Byron (1815–), to Anne Isabella Noel Byron (1822–60)
JM and JN; RM and RN –
mark the shift in Annabella’s parents, in 1816, from Judith and Ralph Milbanke to Judith and Ralph Noel
MN –
Mary Noel (Annabella’s great-aunt)
SL –
Stephen Lushington
WK; WL –
mark the change from Lord (William) King (Ada’s husband) in 1838 to William, 1st Earl of Lovelace
Dates in square brackets indicate conjectured dates
Chapter One: Anticipation (1761–92)
She likes to make up stories: from AINB’s ‘Auto Description’, written at age thirty-nine, c. 1831, Dep. Lovelace Byron 131, fols. 184–90.
Chapter Two: A Very Fine Child (1792–1810)
the county folk flocked in to see their Annabella ‘as if she had been something miraculous’: JM to MN, 12 and 27 October 1793, Dep. Lovelace Byron 17, fols. 166, 167–8.
‘one of the finest girls of her age I ever beheld,’ Mrs Baker of Elemore gushed: Isabella Baker’s addition to a letter from JM to MN, 10 March 1797, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 42–3.
‘she was a very fine Child’: JM to MN, 22 June 1794; 3 September 1797 and 30 May 1795, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 21–2; fols. 60–2.
‘Annabella’s Mama is determined to do it’: Sophy Curzon (later Lady Tamworth) to JM, 26 May 1794, Dep. Lovelace Byron 11, fols. 141–2.
‘but she will judge for herself & cannot be made to like any body’: JM to MN, 26 June 1798, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 58–9.
‘the Angel . . . regrets the Sea and the Sands’: Sophy Curzon to JM, 26 May 1794, Dep. Lovelace Byron 11, fols. 141–2.
‘. . . I believe it is the bathing makes the sun & air catch her skin so much’: JM to MN, 25 August 1797, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 58–9.
Bessy hankered after the privileged world into which she had briefly stepped: R. Anderson Aird, Notes on the Parish of Seaham (booklet, 1912), p. 12.
she had expressed outrage in 1797 at the English government’s persecution of ‘the poor oppressed Irish’: JM to MN, 24 September 1791 and 24 May 1797, Dep. Lovelace Byron 17,
