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The death of her husband in 1887 released her, and she promptly traveled to New York City and thence in 1895 to England and continental Europe. In rapid succession she produced books set in those locales or in old California, and the information she accumulated in her travels lent vividness to her writing. Her work generally drew mixed reviews, with the notable exception of The Conqueror (1902), a novelized account of the life of Alexander Hamilton. Atherton did extensive research for this book, and the result won her critical acclaim and made the book a best-seller. Her controversial novel Black Oxen (1923), the story of a woman revitalized by hormone treatments and based on Atherton’s own experience, was her biggest popular success.

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Atherton wrote more than 40 novels in her long career, as well as many nonfiction works. Her work is uneven in quality, perhaps because of the rapidity with which she wrote, but at its best it displays strength and a talent for vivid description. Most of her novels featured strong-willed, independent heroines active in the world at large, and not infrequently their success stemmed from the characters’ frank pursuit of sexual as well as other pleasures. Adventures of a Novelist (1932) was an autobiography, as was in part My San Francisco: A Wayward Biography (1946).

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen."

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