Background
Elizabeth J. Magie was born in Macomb, Illinois in 1866 to James Magie, a newspaper publisher and an abolitionist who accompanied Lincoln as he traveled around Illinois in the late 1850s debating politics with Stephen Douglas.
Elizabeth J. Magie was born in Macomb, Illinois in 1866 to James Magie, a newspaper publisher and an abolitionist who accompanied Lincoln as he traveled around Illinois in the late 1850s debating politics with Stephen Douglas.
She invented The Landlord"s Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive era economist Henry George. James Magie introduced Lizzie to the economist Henry George"s writing, specifically the book Progress and Poverty, after which Magie became strong supporter of what at that time was called a single-tax system (Georgism). In the early 1880s she worked as a stenographer.
She was also a short story and poetry writer, a comedian, stage actress, feminist, and engineer
In 1906 she worked as a newspaper reporter. Magie first made the game, known as The Landlord"s Game, popular with friends while living in Brentwood, Maryland, and sought her first patent on it while living there.
On March 23, 1903, Magie applied to the United States Patent Office for a patent on her board game, which was designed to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. She was granted United States. Patent 748,626 on January 5, 1904.
In 1906, she moved to Chicago.
That year, she and fellow Georgists formed the Economic Game Company to self-publish her original edition of The Landlord"s Game. In 1912, The Landlord"s Game was adapted in Scotland by the Newbie Game Company as "Bre"r Fox and Bre"r Rabbit". Although the instructions claimed it was protected by a British patent, there is no evidence this was actually done.
As her original patent had expired in 1921, this is seen as her attempt to reassert control over her game, which was now being played at some colleges, where students made their own copies.
In 1932, her second edition of The Landlord"s Game was published by the Adgame Company of Washington Doctorate. C., probably another self-publishing effort. This version was two games in one, as there were alternate rules for a game called Prosperity
After a January 1936 interview with her appeared in a Washington Doctorate. C. newspaper, in which she was somewhat critical of Parker Brothers, they agreed to publish two more of her games.
They sold her final board game inventions Bargain Day and King"s Men in 1937, and a third version of The Landlord"s Game in 1939. In Bargain Day, shoppers compete with each other in a department store.
King"s Men is an abstract strategy game.
Few copies of the Parker Brothers version of The Landlord"s Game are known to exist, but Bargain Day and King"s Men are less rare. Magie died in Arlington, Virginia in 1948, aged 82. Her role as the board game Monopoly"s inventor was uncovered during research for a trial.
Ralph Anspach was an economics professor, and in 1973 he began a long legal battle against Parker Brothers over his Anti-Monopoly game.
While researching the case, he uncovered her patents. His research became part of the court record.