Nellie Bly

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Nellie Bly, circa 1890
Signature Nellie Blys
Poster "Round The World With Nellie Bly"
Bly in Poland, 1914
Bly's grave in New York City

Elizabeth Jane Cochran(e) ( May 5, 1864 in Cochran's Mills, Armstrong County , Pennsylvania – † January 27, 1922 in New York , New York ), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly , was an American journalist and world traveler . She was a pioneer of investigative journalism and embodied the new tone of the time with her reports and accounts of experiences.

Live and act

Elizabeth Jane Cochran was the third of five children born to Michael and Mary Jane Cochran. Her father died when Elizabeth was six years old. Her mother then married a Civil War veteran and alcoholic, leaving the family impoverished. The marriage ended in divorce after five years, and Elizabeth Cochran attended a boarding school for aspiring teachers for a year. At that time, she added an e to her last name.

Professional background

In 1884, Cochran responded to a misogynistic column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch with a spirited letter to the editor . The newspaper's editor, George Madden, was so impressed with the quality of the letter that he offered her a job as a reporter . Since she was currently looking for a job, she accepted the offer. It was also there that she received her alias , after the main character of a popular song by Stephen Foster .

Nellie Bly wrote several investigative reports for the newspaper before being transferred to the Women's Issues desk. Not content with that, she left the newspaper in the spring of 1887 and went to New York. There she was accepted in the fall of 1887 as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer 's newspaper New York World . Her first assignment was to report on the conditions in an asylum for women with mental illnesses on New York's Blackwell's Island in the East River. In order to be able to write this report, she had to commit herself for ten days so that she could experience the treatment and the living conditions of the patients first-hand. This type of covert research subsequently became a trademark of her journalistic work.

World Travel

In 1888, the New York World decided that Nellie Bly should emulate the journey from Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days . She began the journey of over 32,800 kilometers on November 14, 1889 in New York and traveled via England , Jules Verne's home town of Amiens , Brindisi in Italy , Colombo in Ceylon , Hong Kong , China , Japan and San Francisco . As a result, rival newspaper Cosmopolitan also hired a journalist, Elizabeth Bisland , to undercut Nellie Bly's travel time. So the trip became a race. After 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds, Bly completed the journey in what was then the record time on January 25, 1890, thereby winning the race. She was one of the first women to undertake such a journey unaccompanied by a man, making her a role model for many women.

criticism

In several articles, Nellie Bly describes the inhabitants of her host countries as having coarse and unflattering traits. Literary critics therefore accuse the world travelers that some of their articles testify to arrogance and colonial ignorance. Other reviewers consider the criticized text passages to be subtle irony or harmless gossip.

later years

In 1895, at age 31, Bly married 70-year-old millionaire Robert Seaman . After his death in 1904, she gave up writing to attend to the management of his business, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company . She later returned to writing reports. In 1913 she reported on a conference on the subject of women's suffrage and in 1914 on the eastern war front in Europe at the start of the First World War . In 1922, Nellie Bly died of pneumonia at the age of 57 . She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery .

The life and work of Nellie Bly inspired various authors to create biographical-fictional portraits - including young adult books such as Stop the presses, Nellie's got a scoop! by Robert Quackenbush or Nellie Bly's book. Around the world in 72 days by Ira Peck - and novels including Carol McCleary's The Alchemy of Murder .

honors

In Brooklyn , New York , there was the Nellie Bly Amusement Park , themed Around the World in 80 Days . In 2007, the park was renamed Adventurers Family Entertainment Center after a renovation .

In 1994 the Venus crater Bly and in 2021 the autonomous tugboat Nellie Bly were named after her.

publications

  • Ten days in a madhouse. Undercover in Psychiatry ( Ten Days in a Mad-House , 1887). Edited, translated from the American and with an afterword by Martin Wagner. Aviva Verlag , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-932338-48-9 .
  • The Mystery of Central Park. A novel . GW Dillingham, New York, 1889.
  • Around the world in 72 days. The fastest woman of the 19th century. Translated from the English by Josefine Haubold, ed. and with a foreword by Martin Wagner. (German-language first edition of Around the World in Seventy-Two Days . Pictorial Weeklies Company, New York 1890.) Aviva Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-932338-55-7 .

Literature (selection)

  • Mignon Rittenhouse: The Amazing Nellie Bly . Dutton, New York, 1956, Reissue: Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, NY, 1971.
  • Iris Noble: A Hundred Masks, One Feather ("Nellie Bly. First woman reporter," 1956). Pfeiffer Verlag, Munich 1959.
  • Barbara Belford: Brilliant Bylines. A Biographical Anthology of Notable Newspaperwomen in America . Columbia University Press, New York, 1986.
  • Brooke KroegerNellie Bly. Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist . Time Books, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8129-1973-4 .
  • Matthew Goodman: Around the World in 72 Days: How two frenzied reporters raced each other in the 19th century. btb-Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-442-75399-4
  • Nicola Attadio: Nellie Bly - Biography of a fearless woman and undercover journalist . Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-280-05715-5

web links

Commons : Nellie Bly  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

itemizations

  1. ↑ Arno Widmann : Your hands-on way. Around 1900 journalism was revolutionized in the USA. A mass audience was reached, daily newspapers developed a visual language. Above all, however, women became sensational reporters, including Nellie Bly. In: Frankfurter Rundschau from 14./15. December 2019, pp. 32-33.
  2. ↑ Stephen Foster-Nelly Bly. genius.com, accessed 25 January 2020 .
  3. ↑ Fabienne Hurst: Star reporter Nelly Bly and her trip around the world in 72 days - history. In: Mirror Online . 25 April 2013, retrieved 14 May 2020 .
  4. ↑ Travel Pioneer Nellie Bly - Around the World in 72 Days. In: sueddeutsche.de . January 24, 2020, retrieved May 14, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Remarkable Nellie Bly's Oil Drum. December 20, 2021, retrieved January 27, 2022 (American English).
  6. ↑ Robert Quackenbush: Stop the presses, Nellie's got a scoop! A Story of Nellie Bly . Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, New York, 1992.
  7. ↑ Ira Peck: Nellie Bly's Book. Around the World in 72 Days . Twenty-First Century Books, Brookfield, Conn., 1998.
  8. ↑ Carol McCleary, The Alchemy of Murder. Forge, New York, 2010. In the fictional plot of this novel, Nellie Bly, along with Louis Pasteur , Jules Verne , and Oscar Wilde , go in search of an assassin at the 1889 Paris World 's Fair.
  9. ↑ Adventurers Amusement Park at www.ultimaterollercoaster.com, accessed 3 January 2022
  10. ↑ Bly in the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
personal data
SURNAME Bly, Nellie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cochran, Elizabeth Jane (real name); Cochrane, Elizabeth Jane (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist
BIRTH DATE May 5, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1922
PLACE OF DEATH New York City , New York