4 comments about Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.

1. Today, most people know Mary Wollstonecraft for two things: her pioneering book, considered the first feminist work 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', and her famous daughter, Mary Shelley, author of `Frankenstein'. Diane Jacobs' biography shows that Wollstonecraft was much more than her works and progeny. Born into a life of unnecessary poverty (her father wasted the family money), Wollstonecraft, from an early age, fought against the injustices she saw around her. By the time she reached adulthood, she had rejected the typical role for women in the 18th century, especially where conventional marriage was concerned; she also believed there was more to life than teaching or being a governess (the acceptable occupations for women). After trials, more poverty, and unrequited love, Wollstonecraft comes into her own when she becomes a writer and then travels to France during the revolution: here she is exposed to the wider world, serves as an education advisor in one of the revolutionary governments, and meets the love of her life, American Gilbert Imlay, by whom she has a daughter, Fanny. Although the relationship doesn't last, self-realization propels her to a mature writing style and philosophy that was unfortunately cut short by her death after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary. Jacobs does an excellent job of chronicling Mary's life and work; however, I found the beginning of the book repetitious (but then again, so was her early life), and only when Mary goes to France did I find it to be interesting. What I found fascinating was the stereotypical `female' reaction Mary has to her deteriorating relationship with Imlay: plaintive letters and even suicide attempts to get attention and keep an unfaithful (and flaky) lover with her. Jacobs has a knack for describing the supporting characters in Mary's life wonderfully: Mary's two sniping sisters, their resentment and complete lack of understanding of Mary's choices (and some of it is deserved, as many of Mary's promises to help them never came to be); Imlay, obviously good-hearted, but shallow (and surprisingly naïve - his request of William Godwin to not talk badly about him, even though he takes Fanny's support money away after Mary's death is worthy of criticism); Joseph Johnson, whose long-suffering support of Mary makes him one of the most sympathetic characters in her story; and Henry Fuseli, the painter, for whom Mary had an obsessive passion (despite the fact he was bisexual and married). Perhaps where this book falls short is in the portrait of William Godwin: not really mentioned until the middle of the book, he seems tacked on at the end; his and Mary's relationship, at times, seems one of convenience, at least for her. The most poignant part of the book, at least for me, was at the end, when Fanny, overlooked by her stepfather (and ignored by her biological father) accomplishes what her mother attempted: at 22, she travels to Wales, checks into a hotel, and commits suicide, leaving a letter hoping that her family would "have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed..." (285). It would have been fascinating to learn what this first, and possibly smarter, daughter of Wollstonecraft could have accomplished had she been given the chance.



2. If you are familar with Mary Shelley(or her classic book "Frankenstein") This extremely researched and well-written biography introduces you to her mother,Mary Wollenstonecraft(Godwin) A lady who was truly before her time(the late 1700's). The daughter of an abusive father and indiffrent mother,her brilliant mind enabled her to write the classic treatise "Vindication Of The Rights Of Women" while only in her 20's. She also journeyed to France and witnessed The French Revolution in all it's g(l)ory,had several passionate love affairs,one which produced a child though the father had no intention of leaving his wife and marrying her, making her a single working mother long before it was either fashionable or accepted. She married William Godwin ,(the father of the future Mary Shelley) and tragically died from complications of her childbirth at 38. Although Ms. Wollenstonecraft's life was short,it was well-lived and makes for fascinating reading that the author(Diane Jacobs) vividly brings to life with both immediacy and wit. An empowering book for woman as well as an engrossing bio for both sexes..



3. I had the great pleasure of reading and using Diane Jacobs' "Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft" while researching and writing my recent biography, "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy (Corinthian Books, 2002). Vice President Aaron Burr, for all his flaws, was the first prominent American man to enthusiastically embrace and publicly endorse Wollstonectaft's radical feminist views on the equal education of women. He used her principles to give his teenage daughter, Theodosia, a "man's education" which would equip her for the three roles in life he envisioned for her: queen, president, or empress. I found Ms. Jacobs' work extremely insightful and enormously useful in understanding this woman who many cite as one of the first mothers of feminism. -- Richard N. Côté



4. Diane Jacobs has taken the intriguing, and sometimes tragic story of Mary Wollstonecraft and turned out a riveting account of a true pioneer. Fresh and readable, the book makes use of previously unknown sources to provide a new perspective on someone who's life was even more dramatic than her important writings. Far and away the best book on Wollstonecraft. Truely enjoyable and highly recommended.

5 comments about The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter.

1. I bailed out of this about a third of the way through, having gotten extremely frustrated waiting for the author to discuss Ada Lovelace. She never was as vividly portrayed as her parents; I have learned more about her from snippets in books about Victorian intellectual life. Even when she is on stage, it is as the puppet of her domineering mother - the incidents are at least as much about Lady Byron as about Ada. I suggest that my review title would be a more accurate description of the contents. Or perhaps, the Martyrdom of Lord Byron at the Hands of His Demented Wife.
   
   It appears that the author's real interest is Lord Byron, who appears in what is supposedly a biography of his daughter more than can be justified, since he had virtually no involvement in her life after the shipwreck of his marriage. I am somewhat skeptical about how good a father Byron would have been in any case - writing touching lines about the loss of one's child is a far cry from the actual inconveniences of being a parent. This really isn't the point. Byron must have haunted Ada's life: he was famous, and Woolley would have it that cleansing his daughter of any similarities was the obsession of Lady Byron's life. But this wasn't the flesh-and-blood Byron, but society's and Lady Byron's view of him. Woolley rambles on about his doings that were probably irrelevant to Ada. Meanwhile, she is a dimly glimpsed cipher.
   
   Despite the one star, this might be an interesting book for someone who wants to read about Byron and his marriage, particularly a reader who isn't expecting something else.
   
   It's a pity that the Byrons' marriage was such a disaster, but really, I picked this up to learn about Ada Lovelace, not how vicious unhappy marriages can get. For that purpose, an article would have sufficed.



2. As a historian of science and technology, and also a person very interested in computer science and fascinated by poetry as well, this book looked like a full 5 stars at first. Like some of the other reviewers, I felt swamped by the details of Ada's emotional life; yet, there are flashes of brilliance where the author makes a clear connection between her social position, her interior life as we can best judge it, and her pursuits. I wonder if there would have been a better way to organize the book; as it stands now, the book is almost purely narrative (with some asides and flashbacks), and appears to be aimed at the popular reader with a seasoning of technical information to goad the more serious critic into reading on. On the positive side, I was pleased to read a clarification of Ada's role in the Babbage Difference Engine's precocious presentation. And at times, the story was fascinating. Other times, it was just plain soggy.



3. Ada Lovelace had a rich intellectual life.

   As a huge disservice to her, this book is one extended gossip column of speculation and opinion about her personal life and that of her parents. In contrast, only a few pages are devoted to the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine.

   At first I thought the author was gossiping about her parents as what he considered a necessary background to understanding Ada, so I kept reading, hoping to get to the substance of the book soon-- but the gossip never stopped, right through the description of her death.

   If you too have a rich intellectual life, you will enjoy this book as much as you enjoy reading gossip about celebrities in the National Enquirer.




4. Every computer programmer knows (or should) that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer, honored with the name of the DoD's official programming language. What I didn't know was that she was the daughter of Byron, the poet.

   Her parents were a very strange match, actually: Byron the flamboyant Romantic poet and Annabella Millbanke, a coldly rational woman he dubbed "the Princess of Parallelograms." Their relationship was a brief one, followed by a bitter estrangement, but it produced a daughter, Ada.

   Ada was raised exclusively by her mother, seemingly more as a science project - a demonstration of rational childraising principles - than as anything involving parental affection. Not surprisingly, she grew up to be a brilliant woman prone to nervous disorders which, when combined with attempts at treatment, led to a short life, with her dying at 37.

   The focus of this book is set by the dichotomy between science and poetry exemplified by Byron and Annabella. The time period is one of extraordinary technical advancement, with the locomotive and the telegraph shrinking the world in a way that even our jet planes and satellite links can't compare. Some embraced this revolution, even some of the poets, while others rejected it.

   Those like me who came to this book looking for a detailed account of Ada and her association with Babbage and his Difference Engine will come away disappointed. It is indeed covered, and Woolley describes Ada's monograph on the principles of the Engine as being a hundred years ahead of its time. But after providing a copious lead-in (to such an extent that Annabella seems as much the subject as Ada), he quickly moves on to the latter part of her life.

   Still, this is an interesting book about a fascinating age and fascinating people.




5. We will forever wonder if Charles Babbage could have given the computer age a jump start of a century. His brilliant designs for intricate and complicated calculating machines included the never-built Analytical Engine, which would have had a memory and a processor like our electronic versions, and would have run on punched cards, programmable and flexible enough to vary its routine through the If-Then steps familiar to any programmer. It never got funded because others were not able to envision just how singularly useful the gadget could have been, but Babbage had one friend and interpreter who knew the potential of his creation, and who handed the world a prescient account of what this computer might be expected to do.

   Her name was Ada Lovelace, and although her ties to Babbage and his machine give her a connection to our century, she was a sensation in her own times by right of birth. As told in the exciting biography _The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter_ (McGraw-Hill) by Benjamin Woolley, everyone knew about Ada because she was the one child of Lord and Lady Byron. Their stormy marriage had endured only eleven months when Ada was born, and a month later, Lady Byron left him; he left for the continent, never to see his daughter again. Lady Byron was motivated ever after to vindicate herself against Byron, and she raised Ada to be a soldier in this cause; she tried to make sure that the child was raised on mathematics to suppress imagination and keep any elements of the Byronic temperament from breaking out.

   Raising Ada was thus a science experiment, one that didn't work. She remained curious about her father, and as she got older, she was convinced that she had genius from him and was impelled to express it. She couldn't do it through mathematics, as despite all the intense training, she wasn't a mathematician. But she was introduced to Babbage, and in 1840, set out to translate a paper he had presented on his Analytical Engine in Italy. She didn't just translate, but with Babbage's help, she made her own notes on the meaning of the computer and what it could and could not do, amazingly prescient for her time.

   Woolley has not only given a fine biography of a limited woman who happened to be at the center of events that presaged our future. He has given capsule biographies of Lord and Lady Byron, Babbage, and many others who were connected with her. Furthermore, he has given historic notes on phases that touched Ada's life, such as phrenology and mesmerism, which are extremely interesting and valuable, and his argument that the Analytical Engine could not catch on because the Victorian world was not ready for the computer is fascinating. Even feminists and cyberhistorians who want to make Ada something she wasn't (and there are many of these) should be thrilled with this portrait of what she really was.

4 comments about First Childhood.

1. A nice, slow read about the nice English child-Lord Berners.Although jacket blurbs promise to make the reader laugh,laugh,laugh..I only smiled!



2. I came to Berners' writings by way of his music. "The Triumph of Neptune," a Beecham staple, has long been a favorite of mine, and the ongoing Berners series on the Marco Polo label has been a delight.

   Above all else, what one seems to encounter when reading ABOUT Berners are copious anecdotes of his alleged "eccentricity." Having completed both volumes of this delicious memoir, I am tempted to chalk it all up rather to a keenly-developed wit and an extremely cultivated sense of the ridiculous. In fact, Berners in his own words comes across as exceptionally sane, a gifted observer. Time and again, he hits upon just the right detail to establish a knowing sympathy with his reader, skewering the hypocrisies of relatives and professors alike, and deftly conveying all the distant terrors of childhood. At the same time, he casts an almost Proustian glow over his recollections, so that there are moments of aching nostalgia, as we have all experienced at one time or another.

   Those curious about his later musical triumphs may find themselves disappointed - there are sporadic anecdotes about his first encounters with the music of Chopin and Wagner, but nothing of those he rubbed shoulders with in his maturity - but "disappointment" is soon compensated for by Berners' wit. The man certainly did know how to craft a sentence, and his prose is studded with erudite (although not too much so) allusions, always to humorous effect. If the book is to be criticized, it is because it is TOO SHORT. I am delighted to find there is actual a third volume, picking up the thread of the second, about his adventures in France. I will be ordering this very soon.

   An extremely entertaining memoir. You'll probably be hungering for more, so be sure and move on to "A Distant Prospect."




3. Lord Berners remembers childhood more accurately than most memoirists. He doesn't romanticize nor does he dwell on the darker days. He looks back with wry amusement at himself (an only child of a thoughtful and dreamy nature) and his family (relics of another era). Written with a deft light touch and adult insight into the ways of childhood. Don't miss this -- you'll laugh out loud!



4. This much talked about but rarely read character from the recent past is proved to be a real artist and talented writer in this lovely book. I dare you not to be enchanted by this wonderfully written and charming tale of a comfortable childhood. It is arch and queeny at times, but so utterly readable that it is sure to be consumed at a single sitting. For anyone with class!

5 comments about Mother Ireland: A Memoir.

1. I wonder how many readers picked up this innocuous-looking little book thinking it to be another shamrock-bedecked little souvenir from the dear old island. It's coruscating and ambitious. Edna O'Brien eviscerates the sacred cows and spatters the pages with their carcasses. This is from a now-obliterated Ireland of only three decades ago, but much of it reads as if a hundred years ago at least. The opening chapter, in which she narrates the mythic and the historical origins of Ireland, dazzled me with its accomplished polyphony. The photos are typical, I suppose, of the sort that any reader will have before seen, but the captions and the comments that O'Brien appends deserve attention, as do the unfortunately uncredited excerpts from readings that she scatters throughout, especially that of the visit to the Garda (police) house full of drunken men in uniform that is cooly set down in prose out of another O'Brien, pen name Flann.
   
   The only let-down from this was its unevenness. As the book progresses, it reveals more an uncertain tone. Later chapters feel to me unsure of what O'Brien or the editors meant them to convey: autobiography? travelogue? social analysis? memoirs? They gradually coalesce loosely into an account of her own maturity and flight to London from Dublin from the Co Limerick village where she was raised, and are worthwhile, but they do make for quite a change from the opening chapters.
   
   A good follow-up from two decades later would be, if read with a considerable amount of grains of salt, Rosemary Mahoney's "Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Come of Age." The jump from these scenes in 1976 to those in 1994 is amazing, and these have only accelerated since Mahoney's stops. Today's unrecognizably permissive Irish cultural shifts would not have been possible without such as Edna O'Brien, who like Flann O'B, mixed satire and bitterness with affection and pride in the people of their stubborn island.



2. Excellent book. A warm intellectual stream, poetry really. O'Brien writes impressionistically of the history, and her memories of Ireland. Have a glass of wine, and read it through once: a very pleasurable task.



3. This is my second book by Edna O'Brien, and it only confirmed my high opinion of this talented writer. Snip: (...).



4. very flowery, slow moving not up to the level of many other Irish writers, not suited to my taste such as history or amusing recollections



5. Ireland is a woman-- womb, cave, bride, harlot, hag-- so, paraphrased, does Edna O'Brien begin her memoir. It is hard to believe this vibrant, lyrical reminiscence of growing up Irish has been out of print for years. O'Brien has created a personal odyssey in seven episodes out of the mystery and mists of Irish life, weaving it into its history and its mythology. Mother Ireland is comparable to Joyce's little books, Dubliners and Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man, in its command and integration of language and spirit. It dances with words, sensuality and the wondrous imagery, juxtaposed against the ever prevalent and monolithic Church and violence in this society. This is a treasure that imbues a unique touch and colouration -- feminine and mystical, earthy and spectral-- into the literary tradition of Ireland's small books.

No comments about Good-bye to All That and Other Great War Writings.

2 comments about Roald Dahl: A Biography.

1. Decently good biography of Dahl, an often unlikable author of famous children's books, and a few less famous adult ones.
   
   Most famously, of course, are James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Puffin Novels), both made into major Hollywood movies with loving attention to detail and no expenses spared.
   
   Dahl would have approved.



2. this biograhpy helped me learn more about this wonderful author, and see into the depths of Dahl's works.

No comments about Charles Dickens (Pocket Biographies).

No comments about King Edward VIII: The Official Biography.

3 comments about The Life of Kingsley Amis.

1. I found it a struggle to stick with this biography, though I am a big fan of Kingsley Amis and was eager to learn more about his life. I wasn't impressed with author's writing style, found it a bit labored and muddy, and the way he keeps looking for confirmation of Amis's persona in his fictional characters got extremely tiresome and distracting. I think the biggest prblem for me here is that the narrative just isn't smooth enough or captivating enough. I got the feeling that Leader was afraid to say anything truly critical.



2. This a hefty read -- there are relatively few biographies of literary figures that are as long. But, the length is worth it. Leader writes gracefully and interestingly about a man who often is hard to like but difficult not to admire. Most of us know Amis either as the author of "Lucky Jim" (book and movie) or as the father of the Booker Prize winner Martin Amis. Kingsley's career, however, is more important than those two claims to fame. He was one of the initiators of the Angry Young Men who had a major impact on English writing from the 1950s on. And, he brought back to English, and American poetry, an emphasis on accessibility to the average reader, although his effort is not always visible today. Further, he was the model of the hard-drinking, womanizing author that populates so much of popular fiction and film. In that story, we find a lot of what makes his life so sad as well as so interesting. And, this is an interesting book that takes you inside the creative process of writing and the destructive process of hard living.



3. I love Amis' work and expect that he'll be read as long as literature has legs, but this bio requires a lot of stamina. It's all there: drinking, carousing, family life, contrarian politics, the wicked sense of humor. Leader did an enormous amount of research and doesn't pull punches about some serious character flaws. One thing that bugged me throughout was the implicit assumption that the books and poetry were autobiographical - besides being factually wrong, this drags things out unnecessarily.
   
   If I was going to pick out a novel of Amis for the uninitiated, I'd have to make it 3 of them to show his versatility: "Lucky Jim", "The Alteration", and "Ending Up". But you wouldn't go wrong with "Take A Girl Like You", "Girl, 20", "The Anti-Death League", his collected short stories or any of his criticism.

No comments about Phoenix: Queen Victoria's Maharajah: Duleep Singh 1838-93.