Fanny Gardiner (born 1763) was the wife of George Bennet of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire.
Biography[]
Fanny Gardiner was born in London, Middlesex, England in 1763, and she came from a middle-class family of Whig businesspeople. She was the sister of businessman Edward Gardiner and the sister-in-law of Madeleine Gardiner; at age 23, she married the minor Tory aristocrat George Bennet and settled on his Longbourn estate in rural Hertfordshire. She proceeded to bear him five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia. The family lived a lower-upper-class life, hiring a few servants and making £2,000 a year. Fanny's nervous nature led to her husband falling out of romantic love with her, but she remained a devoted wife and a doting mother; in 1812; her daughters Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia were married off to the aristocrats Charles Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy and British Army lieutenant George Wickham, respectively.