Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

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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.
Painting of Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, by Thomas Lawrence, 1822. She sits in a red chair with an ermine cloak beside her, wearing an ivory dress with short puff sleeves and low décolleté with a sprig of flowers. Her dark, lustrous hair is smoothed tightly back into loops behind her head.

Connections

Connections 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...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates Thomas Moore
His social circle included prominent literary women: Mary Tighe , sisters Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) and Olivia Clarke , Mary Shelley , Marguerite Blessington , Louisa Stuart Costello , and Caroline Norton . He knew...
Family and Intimate relationships Caroline Norton
Under Victorian law she was not allowed to participate in the trial. Both her reputation and Melbourne's political career were at stake. In the event the jury found Melbourne innocent without calling one witness for...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In France in 1829, Morgan visited at the top of the social spectrum, represented by Baron James de Rothschild : Rothschild's celebrated chef, Marie-Antoine Carême (whose list of employers included the Prince Regent), made a...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Magic Lantern. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1822.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre. B. Tauchnitz, 1846.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre. Richard Bentley, 1846.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Repealers. Richard Bentley, 1833.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Two Friends. Saunders and Otley, 1835.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Victims of Society. Saunders and Otley, 1837.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. The Works of Lady Blessington. E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838.