Audiobook · read by volunteers
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
Nellie Bly (1864–1922)
Read by Mary Reagan · 18 chapters · 6 h 05
About the book
In November 1889 a young American journalist set out from New York to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. She travelled with a single dress and a single handbag, and she sent back reports of everything she saw: ships and trains, ports and cities, strangers and storms. Back home, readers followed her progress day by day.
Nellie Bly, whose real name was Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, tells the true story of that race against time in a lively, plain-spoken style. The journey took her across the Atlantic, through Europe and the Middle East, to Asia and over the Pacific. In eighteen chapters and a little over six hours, this recording brings an extraordinary feat of reporting and endurance to life, with a good deal of humour along the way.
Introduction
Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (1864–1922), an American journalist who became famous for her daring reporting. Before her trip around the world she had written an exposé of conditions in a New York asylum for women, for which she had pretended to be mentally ill in order to be admitted. Her work belonged to the tradition of investigative reporting that was then new, and she became one of its best-known practitioners.
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days is her account of a journey she made in 1889 and 1890 for a New York newspaper. She wanted to see whether she could beat the fictional journey in Jules Verne’s 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Wearing one dress and carrying one handbag, she reported her travels along the way. Her itinerary took her to England, France, the Middle East and Asia, with a famous stop to meet Jules Verne himself in France. The book shows the world of steamers, railways and telegraph, in which a woman travelling alone was still a surprise.
The result is a snapshot of the late nineteenth century as seen by a curious and decisive observer. Her opinions reflect her time and background, and modern readers will notice the occasional prejudice of the period.
The recording has 18 sections and lasts just over six hours. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Why listen today? Because it is a true adventure, told with humour and zest, and because it reminds us how recently the world felt enormous. Bly’s energy is infectious, and her story still inspires.
Public domain
Nellie Bly died in 1922: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text