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Dec. 5th, 2018 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsApparently there's a DW revival going on, and definitely several new people following this journal; hello and welcome, new people! This shift to an alternate universe where everyone uses DW mostly seems to have happened while I was traveling, so it's a bit confusing, but I'm definitely enthusiastic about it.
Also while I was traveling, I read Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World, as recommended byinnerbrat. This turned out to be an excellent choice to read on a plane because no matter how many delays we hit, Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were always having a much more difficult and stressful time traveling than I was.
I knew a bit about Nellie Bly already; in the 1880s she made a name for herself as one of very, very few big-name female reporters by undertaking such Adventures in Investigative Journalism as 'going undercover in an insane asylum,' 'going undercover in a charity hospital', and 'going undercover to buy a Congressman,' and, moreover, doing so while being a Plucky Young Girl Of But Twenty-Odd Summers.
One slow news day, while racking her brains for a suitable clickbait headline, Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Cochran) decided that it was time to try to beat the (fictional) Round the World in Eighty Days record.
NELLIE BLY'S EDITOR: If we send someone around the world by themselves, it's going to be a man.
NELLIE BLY, FAMOUSLY: "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him."
And thus Nellie Bly was promised the job of racing round the world, if it ever happened, which it didn't until a year later when sales at the World were declining enough that the clickbait potential of "THE WORLD SENDS YOUNG LADY ROUND THE WORLD" started to look extremely appealing. So! Nellie immediately set off for Europe, carrying a single handbag (she wanted to bring a spare dress, but it wouldn't fit in the handbag).
A few hours later, a rival paper, the Cosmpolitan, decided this was a GREAT IDEA and called up freelance poet and essayist Elizabeth Bisland.
ELIZABETH BISLAND'S EDITOR: Elizabeth Bisland, would you like to go around the world starting today immediately?
ELIZABETH BISLAND: .... I write for the literature column??
ELIZABETH BISLAND'S EDITOR: Yes but you're a woman who writes for the newspaper and we really don't have many of those onhand SO ....
ELIZABETH BISLAND: I have plans? Friends are coming to tea tomorrow? I hate the idea of being famous???
The Historical Record is unclear on exactly what Elizabeth Bisland's editor said to convince her to set off around the world in spite of these objections, but suggests that it may have involved arguments like 'if you go, we'll hire you full-time and you won't be freelance anymore!' and, conversely, 'if you don't go, we might not hire you anymore AT ALL.'
Thus: A RACE. Elizabeth Bisland heading westwards, towards California and then across the Pacific, with three or four trunks full of luggage; Nellie Bly already off East across the Atlantic, with her single handbag and no idea that she was actually having a race at all. (She didn't actually get the message until she was in Hong Kong and was NOT thrilled.)
The book follows the racers throughout their adventure, with various detours into the historical and cultural context through with they traveled -- including, significantly, the fact that their routes round the world depended entirely on the infrastructure of British Imperialism At Its Worst. (Somewhat hilariously, Nellie Bly seems to have come out of the experience so annoyed at the British as a whole that she signed up to report from Austria in WWI purely out of spite.)
Which is not to say that either Nellie or Elizabeth was a model of anti-Imperialist sentiment. Indeed, the author of this book spends a fair bit of time being mildly disappointed in Nellie Bly for missing all kinds of opportunities to do the kind of investigative progressive journalism for which she was previously known while she was traveling. Instead, Nellie seems to have spent most of her trip stressing about boat delays, fending off unwanted suitors, and complaining about the English.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Bisland, who didn't want to be traveling in the first place, hit Japan and was like 'travel is great! foreign lands are beautiful! I love adventure! can I just be a travel writer now?'
...and meanwhile meanwhile, the book's author would like to take the opportunity to remind us that the Opium Wars that let Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland visit China were extremely bad, being a stoker on one of the steam-ships that took Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland across the ocean was a terrible career that often led straight to an early grave, and generally nineteenth-century Imperialism was just the absolute worst. Which I do appreciate!
The story of the race itself is absolutely compelling, but the best actual fact I learned from this book was that after Nellie Bly made herself and The World famous, LOTS of papers started employing 'stunt girls' - female reporters, often multiple women writing under a shared pen name - to perform Daring Journalistic Exploits. Why is there not already a trashy-but-compelling costume television series about a ring of nineteenth-century stunt girls going undercover and having adventures? SOMEONE GET ON THIS.
Also while I was traveling, I read Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World, as recommended by
innerbrat. This turned out to be an excellent choice to read on a plane because no matter how many delays we hit, Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were always having a much more difficult and stressful time traveling than I was. I knew a bit about Nellie Bly already; in the 1880s she made a name for herself as one of very, very few big-name female reporters by undertaking such Adventures in Investigative Journalism as 'going undercover in an insane asylum,' 'going undercover in a charity hospital', and 'going undercover to buy a Congressman,' and, moreover, doing so while being a Plucky Young Girl Of But Twenty-Odd Summers.
One slow news day, while racking her brains for a suitable clickbait headline, Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Cochran) decided that it was time to try to beat the (fictional) Round the World in Eighty Days record.
NELLIE BLY'S EDITOR: If we send someone around the world by themselves, it's going to be a man.
NELLIE BLY, FAMOUSLY: "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him."
And thus Nellie Bly was promised the job of racing round the world, if it ever happened, which it didn't until a year later when sales at the World were declining enough that the clickbait potential of "THE WORLD SENDS YOUNG LADY ROUND THE WORLD" started to look extremely appealing. So! Nellie immediately set off for Europe, carrying a single handbag (she wanted to bring a spare dress, but it wouldn't fit in the handbag).
A few hours later, a rival paper, the Cosmpolitan, decided this was a GREAT IDEA and called up freelance poet and essayist Elizabeth Bisland.
ELIZABETH BISLAND'S EDITOR: Elizabeth Bisland, would you like to go around the world starting today immediately?
ELIZABETH BISLAND: .... I write for the literature column??
ELIZABETH BISLAND'S EDITOR: Yes but you're a woman who writes for the newspaper and we really don't have many of those onhand SO ....
ELIZABETH BISLAND: I have plans? Friends are coming to tea tomorrow? I hate the idea of being famous???
The Historical Record is unclear on exactly what Elizabeth Bisland's editor said to convince her to set off around the world in spite of these objections, but suggests that it may have involved arguments like 'if you go, we'll hire you full-time and you won't be freelance anymore!' and, conversely, 'if you don't go, we might not hire you anymore AT ALL.'
Thus: A RACE. Elizabeth Bisland heading westwards, towards California and then across the Pacific, with three or four trunks full of luggage; Nellie Bly already off East across the Atlantic, with her single handbag and no idea that she was actually having a race at all. (She didn't actually get the message until she was in Hong Kong and was NOT thrilled.)
The book follows the racers throughout their adventure, with various detours into the historical and cultural context through with they traveled -- including, significantly, the fact that their routes round the world depended entirely on the infrastructure of British Imperialism At Its Worst. (Somewhat hilariously, Nellie Bly seems to have come out of the experience so annoyed at the British as a whole that she signed up to report from Austria in WWI purely out of spite.)
Which is not to say that either Nellie or Elizabeth was a model of anti-Imperialist sentiment. Indeed, the author of this book spends a fair bit of time being mildly disappointed in Nellie Bly for missing all kinds of opportunities to do the kind of investigative progressive journalism for which she was previously known while she was traveling. Instead, Nellie seems to have spent most of her trip stressing about boat delays, fending off unwanted suitors, and complaining about the English.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Bisland, who didn't want to be traveling in the first place, hit Japan and was like 'travel is great! foreign lands are beautiful! I love adventure! can I just be a travel writer now?'
...and meanwhile meanwhile, the book's author would like to take the opportunity to remind us that the Opium Wars that let Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland visit China were extremely bad, being a stoker on one of the steam-ships that took Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland across the ocean was a terrible career that often led straight to an early grave, and generally nineteenth-century Imperialism was just the absolute worst. Which I do appreciate!
The story of the race itself is absolutely compelling, but the best actual fact I learned from this book was that after Nellie Bly made herself and The World famous, LOTS of papers started employing 'stunt girls' - female reporters, often multiple women writing under a shared pen name - to perform Daring Journalistic Exploits. Why is there not already a trashy-but-compelling costume television series about a ring of nineteenth-century stunt girls going undercover and having adventures? SOMEONE GET ON THIS.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 01:51 pm (UTC)