This graphic novel about one of the earliest female journalists provides an inspiration to young women. Subtitled Journalist, Investigator, Feminist, and Philanthropist, this tale of the adventures of THE INCREDIBLE NELLIE BLY will provide some educational and fun reading.
Luciana Cimino is an Italian journalist and writer, and she uses the example of a young woman studying journalism in the 1920s who might have interviewed Nellie Bly, a woman almost sixty years old. Miriam asks Nellie to tell her story and provides reactions which fit with the modern reader. By this time, Nellie – her real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, from Pennsylvania - had survived a series of extravagant adventures including pretending to be mentally disturbed so she would be locked in the New York women’s asylum, in order to report on the appalling treatment meted out to its residents. Her earliest work of all was a letter written in response to a newspaper article telling women they were best suited to work in the home. This gained her an interview with an editor, who hired her for undercover investigative reporting, a new branch of journalism.
The most fun story looks to be the trip Nellie and a competing woman journalist made around the world; they were trying to complete this in under eighty days. We see the range of dainty products made with Nellie’s likeness or name on them as manufacturers sought to cash in on her notoriety. However, the lady also carried out a range of work to give women more rounded representation, including voting and being elected to major posts.
The artwork is by Sergio Algozzino, who makes the historical study simple and accessible, with nicely fashionable or scarily destitute women, and buttoned-up gentlemen. A preface has been provided by journalist David Randall, showing his admiration for this lady and her activities, which stand the test of time. If you know a young person who would be interested in learning some American history and the story of journalism, THE INCREDIBLE NELLIE BLY would make a good gift. This book can also be used in a classroom or as a family talking point. Reading the graphic novel, I was set to thinking that the path into journalism might be easier these days, but it’s still what you do when you’re there that matters.
A visual biography of the groundbreaking investigative journalist
Born in 1864, Nellie Bly was a woman who did not allow herself to be defined by the time she lived in, she rewrote the narrative and made her own way.
Luciana Cimino’s meticulously researched graphic-novel biography tells Bly’s story through Miriam, a fictionalized female student at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1921. While interviewing the famous journalist, Miriam learns not only about Bly's more sensational adventures, but also about her focus on self-reliance from an early age, the scathing letter to the editor that jump-started her career as a newspaper columnist, and her dedication to the empowerment of women. In fact, in 1884, Bly was one of the few journalists who interviewed Belva Ann Lockwood, who was the first woman candidate for a presidential election—a contest that was ultimately won by Grover Cleveland—and Bly predicted correctly that women would not get the vote until 1920.
Of course Bly’s most well-known exploits are also covered—how she pretended to be mad in order to get institutionalized so she could carry out an undercover investigation in an insane asylum, and Bly's greatest feat of all, her journey around the world in 72 days—alone—which was unthinkable for a woman in the late 19th century. As Miriam learns more of Bly's story, she realizes that the most important stories are necessarily the ones with the most dramatic headlines, but the ones that, in Nellie’s words, “come from a deep feeling.”
This beautifully executed graphic novel paints a portrait of a woman who defied societal expectations—not only with her investigative journalism, but with her keen mind for industry, and her original inventions.
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