There are few women in recent history more impressive than Nellie Bly. In 1889, aged just 25, this American reporter had already pioneered undercover journalism as we know it after faking insanity to expose a poorly run asylum. Then she decided to pull off an even bigger stunt – to prove that fictional character Phileas Fogg’s achievement of going around the world in 80 days wasn’t just possible, but could be beaten.
Sure enough, her record-breaking attempt for newspaper The New York World was a smash hit, and had its readers clamouring for updates day after day, collectively wondering: Where in the world is Nellie Bly?
She raced by steamship and rail through England and France – including a detour to Amiens to meet Jules Verne himself – Italy, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, acquired a spectacularly ill-behaved monkey en route (why is there always a monkey!?), and then embarked on a final dash across America by train to the finish line.
What she didn’t know for most of her trip is that a rival newspaper had decided to pit another woman, Elisabeth Bisland, against her. So how did Nellie Bly travel around the entire world in just 72 days before the era of air travel? Who was this fearless woman, who wrote that if she failed she could never return to New York (“I would rather go in dead and successful than alive and behind.”) And what did she do with her newfound fame on her return?
In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary life of Nellie Bly, the pioneering reporter who transformed investigative journalism, became one of the world’s first celebrity correspondents, smashed Phileas Fogg’s fictional record, and went on to become an inventor, industrialist and one of the most remarkable women of the Gilded age.
Topics: Nellie Bly, investigative journalism, undercover reporting, Ten Days in a Mad-House, Blackwell’s Island Asylum, Around the World in 72 Days, Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne, Phileas Fogg, Elisabeth Bisland, Joseph Pulitzer, New York World, Victorian travel, Gilded Age America, women in journalism, women's history, newspaper history, circumnavigation, record-breaking journeys, solo female travel, travel history.
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