2021/069: The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics -- Olivia Waite

2021/069: The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics -- Olivia Waite

...tonight I learned that there were other women before me. So very, very many of them. They were here all along: spotting comets, naming stars, pointing telescopes at the sky alongside their fathers and brothers and sons. And still the men they worked with scorned them. [loc. 3655]

Set in 1816, this is the love story of two women: Lucy Muchelny, whose astronomical work has been thwarted by the death of her father (and whose heart has been broken by the marriage of her lover Pris), and Catherine, Countess of Moth, a widow who writes to Lucy to request recommendations for someone to translate a treatise on celestial mechanics. ( no spoilers )