Selene Dorswell

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days chronicles Nellie Bly's 1889-90 circumnavigation, conceived as a real-life answer to Jules Verne's fiction. Writing in brisk, first-person reportage, Bly knits together ports and timetables-London, Brindisi, Suez, Colombo, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco-through the era's steamships, railways, and telegraph. She interviews Verne in Amiens, notes imperial infrastructures and cultural encounters, and dwells on the logistics of traveling with a single gripsack and one dress.
The book belongs to late nineteenth-century New Journalism and travel writing, melding speed, spectacle, and empirical observation for a mass readership. Bly (born Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman) was a pathbreaking reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, famous for Ten Days in a Mad-House and other investigative stunt pieces. Her record-setting voyage-shadowed by rival Elizabeth Bisland-was at once a circulation gambit and a feminist wager, proving a woman could traverse the globe unchaperoned, manage money, and master schedules within the industrial networks of modernity.
Readers of travel literature, journalism history, and gender studies will find this a propulsive primary source: a narrative of motion that also reveals the infrastructures and prejudices of its moment. For its pace, candor, and cultural insight, Bly's classic remains indispensable-and unexpectedly contemporary. Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable-distilled, never diluted.
Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.