Lizzie Magie: America's First Lady of Games

David Parlett's article profiles Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie (1866–1948), a Georgist inventor whom he argues deserves recognition as the true originator of Monopoly, and whom he proposes as "America's first lady of games." The piece aims both to reclaim her historical standing and to reconstruct the development of her game, The Landlord's Game, which she patented in 1904. Parlett frames the work as a partial biography, acknowledging that a full biography of Magie remains unwritten and that key details, such as her Quaker affiliation and her alleged friendship with the ethnologist Stewart Culin, lack documentary confirmation.

The central argument concerns the game's innovations. Parlett credits Magie with converting a linear race-game path into a closed circuit and with introducing property purchase and rent-charging between players, mechanics he considers largely unprecedented in race games. He traces the game's evolution from its original capitalist-framed objective to a more explicitly anti-monopolist version, and then to its adoption by Quaker communities such as Arden, Delaware, where it was reshaped and disseminated, eventually becoming the basis for Charles Darrow's 1933 Monopoly, which Parker Brothers published.

The article also sketches Magie's broader career, including her poetry, her typewriter patent, her 1906 newspaper stunt advertising herself as a "slave" for sale, and her 1910 marriage to journalist Albert Phillips. Its concluding section recounts her financial settlement with Parker Brothers for roughly $500, the company's later suppression of her credit, and the eventual vindication in the 1970s through Ralph Anspach's litigation and research.