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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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

Timeline

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Texts

Reynolds, Frederic Mansel et al., editors. The Keepsake. Hurst, Chance; R. Jennings, 30 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Lottery of Life. H. Colburn, 1842.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Magic Lantern. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1822.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre. B. Tauchnitz, 1846.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre. Richard Bentley, 1846, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Repealers. Richard Bentley, 1833, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Two Friends. Saunders and Otley, 1835, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Victims of Society. Saunders and Otley, 1837, 3 vols.
Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of. The Works of Lady Blessington. E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838, 2 vols.