Margaret (Power) Farmer Gardiner, countess of Blessington, a noted beauty and salon hostess, was also a diarist, novelist, gossip writer, and travel writer. People appreciated her works for their shrewd observations as well as for the social and personal attraction that the drama of what R. R. Madden called "the most gorgeous Lady Blessington" aroused, and she wrote to finance the fashion and entertainments for which she was famous. She summarized in 1839 what she saw as the ethos of fashionable life that she knew during the late-Regency and early-Victorian years: "'Be prosperous and happy, never require our services, and we will remain your friends.' This is not what society says, but is the principle on which it acts." She could well base this observation on her own experiences.

Born Margaret Power at Knockbrit, County Tipperary, Ireland, on 1 September 1789, she was the fourth of six children of Edmund...