Lizzie Magie
Born: May 9, 1866, Macomb, Illinois, U.S.
Died: March 2, 1948 (aged 81), Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips née Magie was an American game designer, writer, feminist, and Georgist. She invented The Landlord’s Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive era economist Henry George.
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that people should own the value that they produce themselves, while the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society.
Lizzie Magie was born in Macomb, Illinois, in 1866 to Mary Jane (née Ritchie) and James K. Magie, a newspaper publisher and an abolitionist who accompanied Abraham Lincoln as he traveled around Illinois in the late 1850s debating politics with Stephen Douglas. After moving to the D.C. and Maryland area in the early 1880s, she worked as a stenographer and typist at the Dead Letter Office. She was also a short story and poetry writer, comedian, stage actress, feminist, and engineer. She also spent her leisure time creating a board game called the Landlord’s Game, that was an expression of her strongly held political beliefs. At the age of 26, Magie received a patent for her invention that made the typewriting process easier by allowing paper to go through the rollers more easily. At the time, women were credited with less than one percent of all patents. She also worked as a news reporter for a brief time in the early 1900s. In 1910, at age 44, she married Albert Wallace Phillips. They had no children.
The Landlords Game Board – Precursor of Monopoly
In 1904, Lizzie Magie patented her Landlord’s Game. Among other things, her patent features the phrase Go to Jail, railroad spaces, and a Public Park space that predates Free Parking.
For generations, the story of Monopoly’s Depression-era origin story delighted fans.
Often tucked into the game’s box, the tale revolved around Charles Darrow, an unemployed man in Philadelphia who dreamed up the game in the 1930s. He sold the game to Parker Brothers, not only saving him and the company from financial ruin but becoming wealthy—a Cinderella story made of cardboard and real-life Monopoly money.
The trouble is it isn’t exactly true.
Monopoly’s roots begin not with Darrow, but with Lizzie Magie’s Landlord’s Game.
Magie is one of countless women whose contributions were minimized, largely ignored, or in some cases, deliberately erased. And with Monopoly, understanding the story of its true inventor provides a fascinating window into not only one woman’s life and times, but how the game that sits in many closets isn’t necessarily what we thought it was.
It was a version of Magie’s Landlord’s Game that Charles Darrow was taught by a friend, played, and eventually sold to Parker Brothers. The version of that game had the core of Magie’s game, but also modifications added by the Quakers to make the game easier to play. In addition to properties named after Atlantic City streets, fixed prices were added to the board. In its efforts to seize total control of Monopoly and other related games, the company struck a deal with Magie to purchase her Landlord’s Game patent and two more of her game designs not long after it made its deal with Darrow.
Magie’s identity as Monopoly’s inventor was uncovered by accident. In 1973, Ralph Anspach, an economics professor, began a decade-long legal battle against Parker Brothers over the creation of his Anti-Monopoly game. In researching his case, he uncovered Magie’s patents and Monopoly’s folk-game roots. He became consumed with telling the truth of what he calls “the Monopoly lie.”
Roughly 40 years have passed since the truth about Monopoly began to appear publicly, yet the Darrow myth persists as an inspirational parable of American innovation. It’s hard not to wonder how many other buried histories are still out there—stories belonging to other lost “Lizzie Magies” who quietly chip away at creating pieces of the world, their contributions so seamless that few of us ever stop to think about the person or people behind the idea.
But for Magie, even if its late, credit is finally being paid due. And our Monopoly games are better for it. Perhaps no one says it better than Magie herself in a 1940 edition of Land and Freedom, a Georgist publication: “What is the value of our philosophy if we do not do our utmost to apply it? To simply know a thing is not enough. To merely speak or write of it occasionally among ourselves is not enough. We must do something about it on a large scale if we are to make headway. These are critical times, and drastic action is needed.”
Magie died at the age of 81 in 1948. She was buried with her husband Albert Wallace Phillips, who had died in 1937, in Columbia Gardens Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. Magie died without having any children. At her death, she was not credited for the impact that she had on the board game community and American culture.