Mary Margaret Blair Busk

Mary Margaret Blair Rusk (1779-1863) was a writer and translator from Portland Place, London. She was the daughter of Alexander Blair, a nonconformist soap maker from Birmingham, where he was a member of the Lunar Society. He was a proprietor of the Royal Institution in London. In 1825 she became a contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine in Edinburgh, writing initially on Schiller and contributing 32 articles by 1838, with considerable attention to German writers, especially German idealist thought. Her reviews are neither genderless nor do they adopt a male stance, but at times deliberate confuse gender. She also wrote two novels: Zeal and Experience: a Tale (1819) and the better-known Tales of Fault and Feeling (1825).  She was also a writer of historical works, including Medieval Popes (1854-6).