Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

01 September 1789 - 04 June 1849

Standard Name: Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner,,, Countess of

Birth Name: Margaret Power

Married Name: Margaret Farmer

Self-constructed Name: Marguerite Gardiner

Indexed Name: Marguerite Gardiner

Married Name: Marguerite Gardiner

Titled: Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Pseudonym: The Author of the Magic Lantern

Pseudonym: The Author of Sketches and Fragments

Used Form: Marguerite, Lady Blessington

Marguerite Blessington wrote non-fiction, poetry, and novels, many of them in the silver-fork category. Although she was a popular novelist in her day, well reviewed and respected by a number of other writers, her account of her conversations with Byron remains the work for which she is remembered. Other works combine memoir with travel writing. In accounts of the literary milieu she is remembered for her editorship of annuals in the 1830s and 1840s and as a brilliant literary hostess.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort ascending	Author name	Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Elizabeth Jenkins	The ten women here share varying degrees and varying combinations of sexual, political, or literary notoriety. Two of them—Elizabeth Inchbald and Lady Blessington —hold the status of professional authors. Two more—Becky Wells (whom...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Camilla Crosland	Since she was well-connected in London literary circles, she was able to include in her memoir recollections of time spent working with the annuals and of literary figures such as Grace Aguilar , Lady Blessington
Textual Production	Camilla Crosland	Her other work for periodicals includes a short story, A Railroad Adventure, published in 1843 in Ainsworth's Magazine, as well as pieces in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Bentley's Miscellany, the Illustrated London...
Textual Production	Harriet Downing	She had contributed More Poets on the Ice on 25 February 1835 to Leigh Hunt 's short-lived London Journal. C19: The Nineteenth Century Index. http://c19index.chadwyck.com/home.do. The anonymity of the series of nurse memoirs tantalized readers; it had a thousand and...
Textual Features	Christian Isobel Johnstone	Johnstone's Edinburgh Magazine was heavily political in content, while Tait's was designed to have greater appeal to the general reader. Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/. Between 1832 and 1846 (when she retired) CIJ contributed over four hundred articles to the...
Textual Features	Dorothy Wellesley	DW 's selection, though, demonstrates a serious interest in women's literary and feminist history. Of the selections whose authors can be identified, almost half are women. Though Marguerite, Lady Blessington , doyenne of the albums...
Reception	Eliza Cook	Reynolds's Miscellany printed an illustration of Lady Blessington , Eliza Cook , and Caroline Norton . Cook, in an open shirt and dark jacket, wears plainer and less feminine dress than the other two, whose...
Publishing	Frances Browne	After this journal ceased publication in 1841, she sent poems to the editor of the Athenæum instead, promising future contributions in exchange for a copy of the magazine. The editor accepted, and in the following...
Publishing	Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde	In March 1855, under her own name, JFLW published her review of R. R. Madden 's The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington in the Dublin University Magazine. The review was...
Publishing	Camilla Crosland	The name of Camilla Toulmin (later CC ) appeared in print for the first time as the author of the poem The Parting in Heath's Book of Beauty, edited by Lady Blessington . Crosland, Newton. Rambles Round My Life. E. W. Allen. 346 Boyle, Andrew. An Index to the Annuals. Andrew Boyle. 292
Occupation	Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach	Richard Robert Madden , correspondent and biographer of Marguerite Blessington , observed EMA working in her garden at the Villa Cravenin very coarse and singular attire. He did not fail to comment on...
Literary responses	Camilla Crosland	Marguerite Blessington wrote to her about two of her early contributions, the The Blind Girl's Lament (1839) and The Maniac (1840), informing her: I have rarely perused two more beautiful poems . . . and...
Friends, Associates	John Forster	JF was well connected in literary circles. He counted Elizabeth Gaskell , Lady Blessington , Jane Welsh Carlyle , Charles Dickens , Edward Bulwer Lytton and Leigh Hunt among his intimates. Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Friends, Associates	Fanny Aikin Kortright	She was a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne (whom she never met, but of whose wife and family she remained a faithful friend and correspondent after Hawthorne's death), Bulwer Lytton , and Charles Kingsley (all of...
Friends, Associates	L. E. L.	By the time LEL began living alone, she was well-known in literary circles. She became a good friend of Emma Roberts and Rosina Bulwer-Lytton around this time, and gradually became a recognized London public figure...

Timeline

March 1836

Walter Savage Landor published Pericles and Aspasia, a collection of imaginary letters between the Athenian statesman and the learned and cultivated courtesan.

By 12 May 1845

Benjamin Disraeli published his condition-of-England novelSybil, or The Two Nations.

Texts

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Conversations of Lord Byron. Richard Bentley, 1834.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Conversations of Lord Byron. J. C. Hotten, 1869.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Conversations of Lord Byron. Editor Lovell, Ernest J., Princeton University Press, 1969.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and Marguerite A. Power. Country Quarters. W. Shoberl, 1850.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Desultory Thoughts and Reflections. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and Edward Thomas Parris. Gems of Beauty. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1836.

L. E. L., and Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, editors. Heath’s Book of Beauty. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, editor. Heath’s Book of Beauty. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. “Introduction”. Conversations of Lord Byron, edited by Ernest J. Lovell, Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 3-114.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Journal of a Tour through the Netherlands to Paris, in 1821. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.

Hemphill, Barbara. Lionel Deerhurst; or, Fashionable Life under the Regency. Editor Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Richard Bentley, 1846.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Marmaduke Herbert; or, The Fatal Error. Richard Bentley, 1847.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Meredith. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1843.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Rambles in Waltham Forest. Privately Printed by J. L. Cox, 1827.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Sketches and Fragments. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. Strathern; or, Life at Home and Abroad. H. Colburn, 1845.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and Alfred Edward Chalon. The Belle of a Season. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and Edmund Thomas Parris. The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Confessions of an Elderly Lady. Baudry, 1838.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and Edmund Thomas Parris. The Confessions of an Elderly Lady. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Governess. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Idler in France. H. Colburn, 1841, http://U of T.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Idler in Italy. H. Colburn, 1839.

Reynolds, Frederic Mansel et al., editors. The Keepsake. Hurst, Chance; R. Jennings.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Lottery of Life. H. Colburn, 1842.