Nellie Bly

Inscribed first edition of Nelly Bly's account of her world-record breaking circumnavigation; presented to the Chief Engineer of the SS Oceanic, who pushed his crew to get Bly to San Francisco on time to make her record.

• Nellie Bly (American).
• Nelly Bly's Book. Around the world in seventy-two days.
• New York: The Pictorial Weeklies Company, 1890.
• [2], 286 pages.
• Inscribed by Bly on verso of title page in black ink: "To / Mr William Allen / Steamship 'Oceanic' / With the compliments of / Nellie Bly / New York. Aug 18, 1890."
• Original green cloth, gilt-stamped spine, navy coated endpapers, housed in custom clamshell box.

"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?" — Nellie Bly to her editor, Joseph Pulitzer

Inspired by Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's 1873 novel Around The World In Eighty Days, Bly traveled alone by steamship and rail with a single bag from Hoboken to London, made her way across Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and raced back to New York to complete a circumnavigation in 72 days. Along the way she sent back dispatches of her adventures that were published by The New York World to a breathless audience, becoming a popular folk hero much in the way Charles Lindbergh would become nearly forty years later. The voyage was one of the most famous of its era, a race "through the very heart of the Victorian age" (Goodman, xxiii).

Even before this trip, Bly had developed a reputation as one of the most intrepid journalists then working in New York. "No female reporter before her had ever seemed quite so audacious, so willing to risk personal safety in pursuit of a story" (Goodman, xv). She had gone undercover at the Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum to report on the mistreatment of female patients, as well as taken on various working-class positions to investigate exploitative practices of employers.

This copy was presented by Bly to Chief Engineer William Allen of the SS Oceanic, the ship that took Bly on the penultimate leg of her journey (from Yokohama to San Francisco). According to biographer Matthew Goodman, Allen "quickly became [her] strongest supporter aboard the ship" (260), and Bly herself would describe the Chief as "a jolly storyteller, a capital singer and a popular gentleman with both sexes" (quoted in ibid, 261). Running behind, Bly fretted throughout the journey that she would not make her record, pleading with Allen — who had been sailing the Pacific for more than a decade — to best the record-setting voyage he'd set only two months earlier on the same ship. She told Allen (and her excited readers), "I would rather go in dead and successful than alive and behind time." Allen charged his crew to get them to San Francisco as quickly as possible, ordering the following couplet to be written "over the engines and throughout the engine room": "For Nellie Bly, / We'll win or die." Despite terrible weather for most of the trip, the ship pulled into San Francisco on January 20th, 1890, two full days ahead of schedule, where Joseph Pulitzer had a private train waiting for Bly to complete her legendary journey.

Around The World In Seventy-Two Days is surprisingly rare, with only this copy appearing at auction about a decade ago and just six copies recorded via OCLC. It was published by the Pictorial Weeklies Company, an entrepreneurial venture launched in 1890 that, according to a contemporary ad, aimed to provide "every city and town [...] its own illustrated weekly." Printed and shipped from New York City, issues contained "8 pages [...] filled with the highest class artistic and literary matter mostly humorous in character" and eight blank pages for local content ("This arrangement enables the local publisher to produce a paper such as it would be absolutely impossible to outside of New York City"). A rather short-lived and unsuccessful venture (it appears to have petered out by 1892 and was bankrupt no later than 1898), Around The World was the only book the company ever issued, and it seems to have received very poor distribution.

A tremendous association copy of a rare and important book, inscribed to an instrumental figure in this myth-making voyage.