A Race Around the World
Overview
In 1890, inspired by Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days, one of the first woman reporters set out to make the trip even faster. Elizabeth Cochrane, who went by the pen name Nellie Bly (1867-1922), was traveling for over a month before she found out that another reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, had been dispatched by a rival publication in the hope of getting around the world first. Beating out both the fictional Phileas Fogg and her real-life competitor, Nellie Bly completed the journey in 72 days, a record that would not be bested until the days of air travel.
Background
In the 1880s, women reporters were all but unknown. There was one female writer in a New York City newspaper office, J.C. Crody, who used the name Jennie June. A young woman named Sally Joy worked for the Boston Post. Elizabeth Cochrane, a Pennsylvania teenager, got her first newspaper job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch because she didn't like an essay the paper ran.
The opinion piece in question, "What Girls Are Good For," railed against the employment of women, who were beginning to get jobs in business. Cochrane wrote a letter to the editor opposing the essay, but didn't sign her own name.
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