History of Ada Byron/notes on the analytical engine

There were indeed women in mid-century England who signed
their names to mathematical articles in popular journals,
and there were influential periodicals, such as the
Edinburgh Review, that lent intellectual women psychological
support.... Although the Ladies Diary ... , the most popular
of the mathematical periodicals, encouraged women to join
wit with beauty, it attracted serious amateurs of both
sexes... [it] was a respectable place to pose mathematical
problems and sustain debate... since there were few science
periodicals in England until the 1830s, technical articles
often appeared in general periodicals like the Ladies Diary.
It may have been something similar that originally sparked
Mrs. Somerville's interest in mathematics. At a tea party
one afternoon, she recalled years later, young Mary Fairfax
had been given a ladies' fashion magazine that contained a
puzzle, the answer to which was given in strange symbols.
These symbols turned out to be algebra. And that magazine
became her introduction to the world of Euclidean geometry
and number.