Unusually, Magie was the head of her household. She had saved up for and bought her home near Washington, along with several acres of property.

It hadn’t been easy. Several years after she obtained the patent for her game, and finding it difficult to support herself on the $10 a week she was earning as a stenographer, Magie staged an audacious stunt mocking marriage as the only option for women; it made national headlines. Purchasing an advertisement, she offered herself for sale as a “young woman American slave” to the highest bidder. Her ad said that she was “not beautiful, but very attractive,” and that she had “features full of character and strength, yet truly feminine.”

The ad quickly became the subject of news stories and gossip columns in newspapers around the country. The goal of the stunt, Magie told reporters, was to make a statement about the dismal position of women. “We are not machines,” Magie said. “Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.”

If Magie’s goal had been to gain an audience for her ideas, she succeeded. In the fall of 1906 she took a job as a newspaper reporter. Four years later, she married a businessman, Albert Phillips, who, at 54, was 10 years Lizzie’s senior. The union was an unusual one — a woman in the 40s embarking on a first marriage, and a man marrying a woman who had publicly expressed her skepticism of marriage as an institution.

Cult Hit to Best Seller

It was a time of shifting attitudes and behaviors. At the turn of the 20th century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace for middle-class families. Changing workplaces gave rise to more leisure time. Electric lighting was becoming common in American homes, reinventing the daily schedule: Games could now be played more safely and enjoyably, and for longer hours, than had been possible during the gaslight era.

Magie’s game featured a path that allowed players to circle the board, in contrast to the linear-path design used by many games at the time. In one corner were the Poor House and the Public Park, and across the board was the Jail. Another corner contained an image of the globe and a homage to Henry George: “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.” Also included on the board were three words that have endured for more than a century after Lizzie scrawled them there: “Go to Jail.”