1921 - Atherton, was an American Feminist and writer of social and historical fiction, much of it set in California. Although her reputation is founded primarily on her California fiction and essays, as well her biography of Alexander Hamilton, Atherton also produced a number of Gothic stories, some of them, such as "The Bell in the Fog", were considered significant achievements in the Gothic/supernaturalist tradition. "The Sisters-in-Law" begins: The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's early days, perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city of a hundred hills. She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an adventurous spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the verandah at night when her legs were longer than her years, and during the past winter to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door when her worthy but hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was the first time that she had been out after midnight.