Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (1857 - 1948) was an American writer. She is best remembered for The Splendid, Idle Forties (1902); The Conqueror (1902) and her sensational, semi-autobiographical novel Black Oxen (1923), about an upper middle-age woman, who miraculously becomes young again after glandular therapy. The latter was adopted into the film Black Oxen in 1923. Atherton was often compared to counterparts like Henry James and Edith Wharton. James assessed Atherton's work and he found the author had reduced the typical man/woman relationship to a personality clash.