“It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” Magie wrote in The Single Tax Review, a journal dedicated to the idea.

Magie was something of a feminist and progressive pioneer, according to the book. By the early 1900s, she owned a home of her own in Washington, D.C., worked as a stenographer and acted and wrote in her spare time. In addition to inventing several games, Magie was also an amateur engineer and held a patent on a tool to more easily pass paper through typewriter rollers.

In 1906, she made headlines around the world when she put herself up for sale as a “young woman American slave” in an effort to raise awareness about gender inequality. The stunt landed Magie a meeting with the writer Upton Sinclair and a temporary newspaper job. And as Magie gained fame, so, too, did her game.

“It kind of goes viral in the way things did in 1904, which is to say more slowly and kind of all over, but it becomes a favorite game among left-wing intellectuals,” Ms. Pilon said. There is evidence of versions played at Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, she said.