author
Mary E. Bradley Lane
A pioneering voice in early American science fiction, this Ohio teacher imagined an all-women utopia decades before feminist speculative fiction became widely recognized. Her best-known novel, Mizora, blends bold social ideas with the sense of wonder of classic adventure fiction.
1 Audiobook
Mizora: A Prophecy A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch
by Mary E. Bradley Lane
About the author
Mary E. Bradley Lane was an American teacher and writer born in Ohio in 1844. She is now remembered as one of the first women in the United States to publish a science fiction novel, and her work stands out for bringing feminist ideas into speculative fiction at a very early moment in the genre's history.
Her best-known book, Mizora: A Prophecy, first appeared as a serial in the Cincinnati Commercial in 1880–1881 and was later published in book form in 1890. Framed as the account of Princess Vera Zarovitch, the novel imagines a technologically advanced society made up entirely of women, making it an important early example of feminist utopian fiction.
Lane published another novel, Escanaba, in 1895, though it is considered lost. She died in Hamilton County, Ohio, in 1930, and her reputation has grown over time as readers and scholars have looked again at the early roots of feminist science fiction.