Elizabeth Magie

Elizabeth "Lizzie" J. Phillips née Magie (1866–1948) was an American game designer and Georgist. She invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive era economist Henry George.

Life and works

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. 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. In 1910 she married, at age 44, Albert Phillips.

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 US 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 U.S. Patent 748,626 on January 5, 1904.