The Prediction: A horror story from a female author that had to write as a man to get the credit her work warranted.

Mary Diana Dods was born at some point in 1790. Much of the details of her life are unknown.

Accounts propose that she was one of the illegitimate daughters of George Douglas, the sixteenth Earl of Morton and that she and her older sister were raised in both Scotland and London. At the time a good education for women was a rarity but it seems Mary attended school or was home tutored.

As a writer she seems only to have published under the pseudonym of David Lyndsay. Her works appeared in perio...