Mary Margaret Busk born Mary Margaret Blair (1779 – 11 January 1863) was an English writer and translator.

Life

Busk was born in

Portland Place Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London. Named after the Third Duke of Portland, the unusually wide street is home to BBC Broadcasting House, the Chinese and Polish embassies, the Royal Institute of British A ...

in 1779. She was the daughter of Alexander Blair (1737–c.1816), a manufacturer and merchant in the Birmingham area, and sister of Alexander Blair who was also a writer. Their mother was Mary Johnson. Her father was an army officer, who in 1780 went into partnership with

James Keir James Keir FRS (20 September 1735 – 11 October 1820) was a Scottish chemist, geologist, industrialist, and inventor, and an important member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Life and work Keir was born in Stirlingshire, Scotland, in ...

Tipton Tipton is an industrial town in the West Midlands in England with a population of around 38,777 at the 2011 UK Census. It is located northwest of Birmingham. Tipton was once one of the most heavily industrialised towns in the Black Country, w ...

. They made alloy window sashes, and

alkali In chemistry, an alkali (; from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. An alkali can also be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a ...

, and the venture became a successful soap manufacturer. The business with Keir included a coal mine. Blair also set up a business making masts, and bought land in the Canadian Maritimes.Eileen Curran, ''Holding on by a Pen: The Story of a Lady/Reviewer Mary Margaret Busk (1779–1863)'', Victorian Periodicals Review Vol. 31, No. 1, Victorian Women Editors and Critics (Spring, 1998), pp. 9–30, at pp. 11–3. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. In later life he encountered financial problems. She married well in 1796 and her husband William Busk became a member of parliament for Barnstable in 1812 at some expense. He lost the seat the same year and he tried for many years to again support the Whigs. Her husband's income fell in 1819 and this may have been due to his gambling. Busk decided to write and using her brother's connections she was able to write for the

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...

in 1825. She had thirty pieces published over the next seven years and at the same time she did reviews for the Foreign Quarterly Review and the

Athenaeum Athenaeum may refer to: Books and periodicals * ''Athenaeum'' (German magazine), a journal of German Romanticism, established 1798 * ''Athenaeum'' (British magazine), a weekly London literary magazine 1828–1921 * ''The Athenaeum'' (Acadia U ...

. Some of these were straight translations, but in others it is her curiosity which has chosen what to translate. She was bringing intriguing publications to the eye of the British reader although her work reflects her own presumption of English superiority. By 1836 Busk was separating herself from her husband whose business affairs were facing even more difficulty. Busk decided to publish her next book herself by subscription and ''Plays and Poems'' was available in 1837. It is said that one of her poems, "Sordello", caused

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...

to rewrite and delay for three years his poem of the same name. In 1841, she published an account of Japan which she was never to visit, cobbled together on existing European accounts which was reprinted 3 times between 1843-1867. Her knowledge and translation skills created ''Mediaeval popes, emperors, kings, and crusaders, or, Germany, Italy, and Palestine, from a.d. 1125 to a.d. 1268''. The work ran to four volumes and was first published from 1854 to 1856. Busk died at her home in London in 1863.

References

External links

''Manners and customs of the Japanese, in the nineteenth century'' (1841)
ref> {{DEFAULTSORT:Busk, Mary Margaret 1779 births 1863 deaths People from London English translators English writers