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. Rulers of Kings begins: When Fessenden Abbott heard that he was to inherit four hundred millions of dollars he experienced the profoundest discouragement he was ever to know, except on that midnight ten years later when he stood on a moonlit balcony in Hungary, alone with the daughter of an Emperor, and opened his contemptuous American mind to the deeper problems of Europe.