Ellsworth Douglass

Pseudonym of US real-estate speculator, insurance broker and author Elmer Dwiggins (1863-1933), whose enterprises (for which he was jailed in 1919-1920) took him to various countries around the turn of the century; his fiction, including his one sf novel, was written during these travels. His first story, "The Wheels of Dr Ginochio Gyves" (September 1899 Cassell's Magazine) with Edwin Pallander, describes a gyroscopically controlled Spaceship; "A Town in the Tree-Tops" (February 1899 Strand) was written solo. His sf novel, Pharaoh's Broker: Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner (Written by Himself) (1899), is a Planetary Romance set on Mars, where parallel Evolution has resulted in a society almost identical to that of Egypt in the time of Joseph. In the end the hero, having been a grain-broker in Chicago, is able to take on Joseph's role.