Classic Author Focus: Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly, whose real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, was an American journalist who was most famous for her trip around the world (inspired by Verne’s book) and her undercover exposé on a mental institution. She more or less created the idea of investigative journalism.
Bly was born in Cochran Mills, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, had begun as a laborer and mill worker before rising to become a prominent business owner. However, her father died intestate when she was six, leaving the family poorly off. She enrolled in Indiana Normal School at the age of 15, but was forced to quit because of lack of funds. In 1880, her mother moved the family to Allegheny City (later Pittsburg) after divorcing her second, abusive husband.
Bly had not been able to find work to help out her family when the Pittsburgh Dispatch published an article named “What Girls Are Good For” that concluded they were mostly good for having children and keeping house. (That lets me out on both counts.) Bly wrote a rebuttal entitled “Lonely Orphan Girl” that impressed the editor so much he ran an ad asking her to identify herself. He offered her the opportunity to write another article and eventually offered her a full-time job.
Her early work was focused on the lives of working women, including an investigative series about woman factory workers. She was assigned to the women’s pages, but became dissatisfied with that. To break out of her role, she traveled to Mexico as a foreign correspondent and wrote a series of articles about customs and lives of Mexican people. These articles were published as a book, Six Months in Mexico. Because she protested the arrest of a journalist who criticized the Mexican government, she was threatened with arrest and had to leave the country.
Bly quit the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 and moved to New York City but had difficulty finding another position. She eventually took an undercover assignment for the New York World to investigate the conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Roosevelt Island (then Blackwell’s Island) by pretending to be insane. Her resulting book, Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation. The asylum was forced to bring about reforms, and she became famous.
Her next suggestion was her trip around the world. She set a world record with her journey, circumnavigating the world in 72 days. After this trip, she began a career as a novelist and wrote 11 novels, the first called Eve, the Adventuress.
Bly left journalism when she married a millionaire, Robert Seaman. After his death, she took over running his company, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company. Unusually for the time, she provided welfare and health benefits as well as recreational opportunities for her employees. However, she was poor at understanding the financial aspects of business and it eventually failed.
She returned to journalism to report on the Women’s Suffrage Procession of 1913 and later wrote articles from Europe’s Eastern front during World War I. She was still working as a writer when she died of pneumonia in St. Mark’s Hospital, New York City.
Dates: 1864-1922
Most popular works: Ten Days in a Mad-House , Around the World in 72 Days, Six Months in Mexico , Eva The Adventuress
Other works: The Mystery of Central Park, New York by Night , nine other novels and other articles
Member reviews:
Ten Days in a Madhouse ( Patty )
