New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace-Lord Byron's daughter and the world's first computer programmer. "Cherished Reader, Should you come upon Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini...consider yourself quite fortunate indeed....Chiaverini makes a convincing case that Ada Byron King is a woman worth celebrating."-USA Today The New York Times bestselling author ofMrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker andSwitchboard Soldiers illuminates the life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace-Lord Byron's daughter and the world's first computer programmer. The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous ofthe Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. But her mathematician mother, estranged from Ada's infamous and destructively passionate father, is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's motherprovides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics andscience. Any troubling spark of imagination-or worse yet, passion or poetry-ispromptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes. When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly eligible young heiress, she atlast discovers the intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life. Little doesshe realize how her exciting new friendship with Charles Babbage-the brilliant,charming, and occasionally curmudgeonly inventor of an extraordinary machine, the Difference Engine-will define her destiny. Enchantress of Numbers unveils the passions, dreams, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largelyunheralded pioneer in computing-a young woman who stepped out of her father'sshadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the new technology that wouldshape the future.