Around the World in Seventy-Two Days

by Nellie Bly, Frances E. Willard (Contribution by), Mary A. Livermore (Contribution by)

Overview

First published in 1890, “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days” is a chronicle of Elizabeth Seaman's record-breaking trip around the world in the footsteps of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg. A fantastic real-life adventure tale highly recommended for those with an interest in travel writing and journalism in general. Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (1864–1922), also known as Nellie Bly, was an American industrialist, journalist, charity worker, and inventor. Together with her famous trip, she is also remembered for feigning insanity in order to infiltrate and write an exposé on an insane asylum. Contents include: “A Proposal to Girdle the Earth”, “The Start”, “Southampton to Jules Verne's”, “Jules Verne at Home”, “On to Brindisi”, “An American Heiress”, “'Two Beautiful Black Eyes'”, “Aden to Colombo”, “Delayed Five Days”, “In the Pirate Seas”, “Against the Monsoon”, etc. Read&Co. Travel is republishing this classic travelogue now complete with an introductory biography by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781528792561
Publisher:	Read Books Ltd.
Publication date:	05/06/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
Sales rank:	800,355
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was an American investigative journalist. Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was raised in a family of Irish immigrants. In 1879, she attended Indiana Normal School for a year before returning to Pittsburgh, where she began writing anonymously for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Impressed by her work, the newspaper’s editor offered her a full-time job. Writing under the pseudonym of Nellie Bly, she produced a series of groundbreaking investigative pieces on women factory workers before traveling to Mexico as a foreign correspondent, which led her to report on the arrest of a prominent Mexican journalist and dissident. Returning to America under threat of arrest, she soon left the Pittsburgh Dispatch to undertake a dangerous investigative assignment for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World on the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. After feigning a bout of psychosis in order to get admitted, she spent ten days at the asylum witnessing widespread abuse and neglect. Her two-part series in the New York World later became the book Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887), earning Bly her reputation as a pioneering reporter and leading to widespread reform. The following year, Bly took an assignment aimed at recreating the journey described in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Boarding a steamer in Hoboken, she began a seventy-two day trip around the globe, setting off a popular trend that would be emulated by countless adventurers over the next several decades. After publishing her book on the journey, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days (1890), Bly married manufacturer Robert Seaman, whose death in 1904 left Bly in charge of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. Despite Bly’s best efforts as a manager and inventor, her tenure ultimately resulted in the company’s bankruptcy. In the final years of her life, she continued working as a reporter covering World War I and the women’s suffrage movement, cementing her legacy as a groundbreaking and ambitious figure in American journalism.

Table of Contents

1. Elizabeth Cochrane

2. A Proposal to Girdle the Earth

3. The Start

4. Southampton to Jules Verne’s

5. Jules Verne at Home

6. On to Brindisi

7. An American Heiress

8. “Two Beautiful Black Eyes”

9. Aden to Colombo

10. Delayed by Five Days

11. In the Pirate Seas

12. Against the Monsoon

13. British China

14. Christmas in Canton

15. To the Land of the Milkado

16. One Hundred and Twenty Hours in Japan

17. Across the Pacific

18. Across the Continent

19. The Record

20. L’Envoi