John Bankston - Nellie Bly: Journalist

In his popular novel Around the World in Eighty Days, French author Jules Verne created the character of Phileas Fogg, whose heroics circumnavigating the globe inspired journalist Nellie Bly. Stuck for ideas for an article, she pitched a proposal to beat the fictional Fogg's time in traveling around the world.

Source: Maxppp/Landov.

Attending law school, practicing law, and in the early morning hours before leaving for work as a stockbroker, Verne wrote. He wrote short stories and plays. None found much of an audience.

He began to write a book after attending meetings at Le Cercle de la Presse Scientifique, a literary club with a scientific bent. He listened as fellow member Flix Tournachon (who was a famous photographer under the name Nadar) described a hot-air balloon he planned to build that would carry a two-story passenger cabin. Inspired by Tournachon's descriptions and two stories from Edgar Allan Poe featuring balloon travel, Verne crafted a nonfiction work incorporating his love of geography and the exploits of recent explorers. In the early 1860s, he hoped his examination of how a piloted balloon could uncover the source of the Nile River would make him a published author.

Unfortunately, one publisher after another rejected it. After the fifteenth rejection, Verne tossed the manuscript into his fireplace. His story was nearly incinerated, but his wife intervened. She pulled it from the flames, insisting he not give up. A few days later, helped by a friend's introduction, Verne met the publisher who changed his life.

Pierre-Jules Hetzel read the book but shook his head as he put it down. Verne prepared for another rejection. Instead, the publisher asked if Verne could turn it into a novel.

Verne did not hesitate. He agreed, signing a 10-year contract for one to two books per year. Some would be serialized in Hetzel's magazine, others published as stand-alone novels. The books were so successful that the contract was regularly extended. Verne eventually contributed some five dozen books to the "Extraordinary Voyages" series over a period of 60 years (including nine published after his death).

Verne did not wait to see if his first novel would succeed. After telling his wife the good news, he quit his job.

The author was not the first to use science in fiction, but as critic John J. Pierce notes, "Science and technology, which had been peripheral to the travel tale when they appeared at all, were now placed at the center and combined with the elementary appeal of romantic action and adventure."4 Verne himself realized he had developed a new genre, one that could make him very, very rich if it succeeded.

It succeeded. His first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, sold well, as did the ones that followed, including A Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Ten years after writing his first novel, Verne published the book that made him rich. Around the World in Eighty Days quickly sold more than 500,000 copies, was widely translated, and inspired journalist Nellie Bly. Like Verne's hero, Phileas Fogg, she too encountered numerous obstacles along the way.

Nellie Bly scarcely slept. Late the next morning she arrived at a steamship company, and after consulting the scheduled departures and arrivals, Bly admitted, "If I had found the elixir of life, I should not have felt better than I did when I conceived a hope that a tour of the world might be made in even less than eighty days."5

Her next stop was the New York World. She had begun to write for the paper by going undercover at a mental hospitalposing as a patient for nearly two weeks. The abuses she described led to a grand jury investigation.

Bly faced her editor. "Have you any ideas?" John A. Cockerill asked.

She replied, "I want to go around the world in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg's record. May I try it?"6

He was enthusiastic. There was just one problem. A male reporter had already pitched the idea. Bly convinced her editor that a woman making the journey would be more newsworthy.

Armed with her editor's support, the two met with the newspaper's business manager. George W. Turner unearthed more obstacles. Charged with keeping expenses down, the business manager believed her trip would cost twice as much as a man's. Single women needed chaperones, he argued. They also brought so much luggage that they would miss train and ship connections.

Bly was enraged. She did not need a chaperone. She would make do with a single bag.

"Very well," she said. "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him."7