Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (née Power; 1 September 1789 – 4 June 1849), was an Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess.

"[1] Her childhood was blighted by her father's character and poverty, and her early womanhood was made wretched by a compulsory marriage at the age of fifteen to Captain Maurice St. Leger Farmer, a military officer whose drunken habits finally brought him as a debtor to the King's Bench Prison, where he died by falling out of a window in October 1817.

[1] Marguerite later moved to Hampshire to live for five years with the family of Captain Thomas Jenkins of the 11th Light Dragoons, a sympathetic and literary army officer.

The Blessingtons and the newly-wed couple moved to Paris towards the end of 1828, taking up residence in the Hôtel Maréchal Ney, where the Earl suddenly died at 46 of an apoplectic stroke in 1829.

Their home, first at Seamore Place, now named Curzon Square, and afterwards Gore House, Kensington, now the site of the Royal Albert Hall, became a centre of attraction for all that was distinguished in literature, learning, art, science and fashion.

[6] Early in 1849, Count D'Orsay left Gore House to escape his creditors; subsequently the furniture and decorations were sold in a public sale successfully discharging Lady Blessington's debts.

[7] Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poetical illustration To Marguerite, Countess of Blessington to a portrait by Alfred Edward Chalon was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839.