publication date: Thursday, December 6, 2018 (part of Winter 2019)

category: Literature

clue: Daughter of philosophers, wife of a novelist, she had plenty of Promethean figures in her life before she created one of her own.

explanation: Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. She was the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. more…

intended difficulty: hard

solved by: Russ Wilhelm, LaVonne Lemler, Samir Mehta, Chris Lemler, Richard Slominsky, Denise Sawicki, and Erik Bates

Gothic Goodbye: The RPG Gothic Earth> has been set in a world of literary creations roughly contemporary to its 1899 setting, with characters like Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula driving much of the storyline. After a decade of play, the game is now in its final weeks. Here's sending it off with a two-week retrospective of authors of that era whose works captured the popular imagination, in the order in which they shaped the world of Gothic Earth.

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W. Somerset Maugham

This mostly gay would-be doctor wrote about human bondage, a razor's edge, and a magician not unlike Aleister Crowley. Go »

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This early American master gave us Hester Prynne, Hepzibah Pyncheon, Dr. Heidegger, and Giacomo Rappaccini. Go »

H.P. Lovecraft

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H.G. Wells

This author, who wrote classic novels about time travel, genetic horrors, an invisible person, and alien attacks, created a deep well of science-fiction concepts to inspire later authors. Go »

Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, Lestrade, Adler, Moran -- and even Mycroft -- will live on forever, thanks to the imagination of this British doctor. Go »