Nellie Bly

Around the World in Seventy-two Days (Dodo Press) Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (wrote as Nellie Bly) (1864- 1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. Bly focused her early work for the Dispatch on the plight of working women, writing a series of investigative articles on female factory workers. She travelled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent. In 1888, Nellie suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, mimicking Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days. In 1894 she retired from journalism, and became the president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. For a time she was one of the leading women industrialists in the United States, but mismanagement forced her into bankruptcy. Forced back into reporting, she covered such events as women's suffrage convention in 1913. Her works include: Ten Days in a Mad House (1887) and Around the World in Seventy-Two Days (1890).