ATHERTON, Gertrude (Franklyn)

(1857-1948)

   US novelist, biographer and historian. In a long career that extended from 1888 to 1946 she published about 50 books in a multitude of genres, her best-known fiction being The Californians (1898; rev 1935) and her sf novel Black Oxen (1923). In this book, whose sexual implications caused a scandal, women (only) are rejuvenated by X-rays directed to the gonads. Though her explicitness and exuberance would not be remarked upon today in a woman, she achieved some notoriety in her prime as an erotic writer; she was also a campaigning (though ambivalent) feminist. The Bell in the Fog, and Other Stories (coll 1905) and The Foghorn (coll 1934) both contain fantasy stories. Other works: What Dreams May Come (1888) as by Frank Lin; The White Morning: A Novel of the Power of German Women in Wartime (1918).