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
Education Elinor Glyn
Since she abhorred her governesses, Elinor took her education into her own hands, reading every book she could in the library: Pepys 's diary, Cervantes ' Don Quixote (an eighteenth-century French version), Scott , Agnes
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Brett
Brett's paternal grandmother, Eugenie Brett née Meyer, had in youth frequented the salon of the writer Marguerite, Lady Blessington .
Hignett, Sean. Brett. Franklin Watts, 1985.
10
Family and Intimate relationships Augusta Ada Byron
Ada's father, the poet Lord Byron , is well known for his transgressive sexual behaviour of various kinds. His marriage to Lady Byron was shortlived: she left him twelve months after their wedding citing (and...
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 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. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
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 George Gordon sixth Baron Byron
His final exit from England was made in the company of Hobhouse , and on the shores of Lake Geneva he met up with Percy and Mary Shelley and Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont , with...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates Camilla Crosland
Her work for the annuals led to her connection with Lady Blessington and her niece Marguerite Power . Despite the disapproval of other friends she was a regular visitor to Blessington's home, Gore House...
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...
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...
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 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...

Timeline

March 1836: Walter Savage Landor published Pericles and...

Writing climate item

March 1836

Walter Savage Landor published Pericles and Aspasia, a collection of imaginary letters between the Athenian statesman and the learned and cultivated courtesan.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
441 (1836): 253
Wheeler, Stephen, and Thomas J. Wise. A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Walter Savage Landor. Bibliographical Society, 1919.
87
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Elwin, Malcolm. Landor, a Replevin. Macdonald, 1958.
285

By 12 May 1845: Benjamin Disraeli published his condition-of-England...

Writing climate item

By 12 May 1845

Benjamin Disraeli published his condition-of-England novel Sybil, or The Two Nations.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Braun, Thom. Disraeli the Novelist. George Allen and Unwin, 1981.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
916 (1845): 477

Texts

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Conversations of Lord Byron. Richard Bentley, 1834.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Conversations of Lord Byron. J. C. Hotten, 1869.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, and Marguerite A. Power. Conversations of Lord Byron. New, Revised, and Annotated, Richard Bentley, 1893.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Conversations of Lord Byron. Editor Lovell, Ernest J., Jr, Princeton University Press, 1969.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, and Marguerite A. Power. Country Quarters. W. Shoberl, 1850, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Desultory Thoughts and Reflections. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.
Parris, Edmund Thomas. Flowers of Loveliness; Twelve Groups of Female Figures. Editor Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, Ackermann.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, 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, 15 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, editor. Heath’s Book of Beauty. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. “Introduction”. Conversations of Lord Byron, edited by Ernest J., Jr Lovell, Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 3-114.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. 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 Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, Richard Bentley, 1846, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Marmaduke Herbert; or, The Fatal Error. Richard Bentley, 1847, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Meredith. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1843, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Rambles in Waltham Forest. Privately Printed by J. L. Cox, 1827.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Sketches and Fragments. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. Strathern; or, Life at Home and Abroad. H. Colburn, 1845, 4 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, and Alfred Edward Chalon. The Belle of a Season. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, and Edmund Thomas Parris. The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Confessions of an Elderly Lady. Baudry, 1838.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of, and Edmund Thomas Parris. The Confessions of an Elderly Lady. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Governess. Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839, 2 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Idler in France. H. Colburn, 1841, 2 vols., http://U of T.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Idler in Italy. H. Colburn, 1839, 2 vols.