Welcome to my website

My name’s James Essinger. In my professional life I’m a writer, editor and publisher. I also sometimes handle public relations projects.

Professionally, I write novels and non-fiction books under my own name and also novels and non-fiction books as a ghost-writer, meaning that I write the books for someone else and that the book is published under that other person’s name. I don’t ask for a co-author credit on the front page, or anywhere else, for a book I ghost-write. If I’m ghost-writing a book for someone, the book becomes their intellectual property and I think it should only have their name on it.

I’ve  written a Young Adult novel, Josh Moonford and the Lost City of Cantia, which is about some bright and (I hope) likeable and entertaining kids who discover an underground Roman world below modern Canterbury. It was published in 2019 by The Conrad Press

Perhaps my best-known book is Ada’s Algorithm a biography of Lord Byron’s daughter, and her enormously important contribution to the history of computing. This book has been published in the UK, the US and in Finnish, Spanish and Polish. It has been optioned for a movie by Monumental Pictures. The book was first published in the UK in 2013 and in the US 2014.

In 2019 I published a new book about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage: Charles and Ada - the computer's most passionate partnership. This is published by The History Press, which also brought out an edition in the US in 2020.

In December 2015 I founded a new publishing imprint, The Conrad Press, which by November 2023 has more than 400 books in print or production. If you are interested in submitting a book to the Conrad Press please use the contact form to email me.

I also write occasional journalism and short stories and on occasion I write poetry.

I have an MA degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford University. I studied at Lincoln College.