Work for a New York newspaper Fall in love Marry a millionaire Change the world Young Nellie Bly had ambitious goals, especially for a woman at the end of the nineteenth century, when the few...
Work for a New York newspaper Fall in love Marry a millionaire Change the world Young Nellie Bly had ambitious goals, especially for a woman at the end of the nineteenth century, when the few...
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Due to publisher restrictions, your digital library cannot purchase additional copies of this title. We apologize if there is a long holds list. You may want to see if other editions of this title are available from your digital library instead.
Description-
Work for a New York newspaper Fall in love Marry a millionaire Change the world
Young Nellie Bly had ambitious goals, especially for a woman at the end of the nineteenth century, when the few female journalists were relegated to writing columns about cleaning or fashion. But fresh off a train from Pittsburgh, Nellie knew she was destined for more and pulled a major journalistic stunt that skyrocketed her to fame: feigning insanity, being committed to the notorious asylum on Blackwell's Island, and writing a shocking exposé of the clinic’s horrific treatment of its patients.
Nellie Bly became a household name as the world followed her enthralling career in “stunt” journalism that raised awareness of political corruption, poverty, and abuses of human rights. Leading an uncommonly full life, Nellie circled the globe in a record seventy-two days and brought home a pet monkey before marrying an aged millionaire and running his company after his death.
With its sensational (and true!) plot, Ten Days a Madwoman dares its readers to live as boldly as its remarkable heroine.
Excerpts-
From the book
Chapter 1: The Gods of Gotham
When the ambitious young reporter Elizabeth Jane “Pink” Cochran—known to her readers as Nellie Bly—left her life and family behind in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was confident one of New York City’s major daily newspapers would hire her at once. She had spunk. She had experience. She was fearless and eager to learn.
And she was wrong.
Nellie left her mother, Mary Jane, behind in Pittsburgh on a May day in 1887, promising to send for her when she found steady work. She stepped up onto a train and later stepped down into the most populous city in the nation wearing a flowered hat she had bought while reporting in Mexico. Like thousands of other young hopefuls, twenty-three-year-old Nellie Bly was on her own for the first time in her life.
She rented a tiny furnished room overlooking an alley on West Ninety-Sixth Street. Her lodgings were in the northernmost part of settled Manhattan, where Broadway became Western Boulevard, and the “boulevard” wasn’t paved yet. Goats wandered through, nibbling weeds in vacant lots between squat houses. It was about as far from where Nellie needed to be every day as it could get.
Her destination was Park Row, also known as Newspaper Row, a street slanting northeast from lower Broadway where newspaper offices hunkered along one side near City Hall. The trek downtown each day was epic. Nellie rode a steam locomotive a half hour south on the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railway. Then she walked east on streets where people lived grimly packed together in tenements (and were often “roasted,” as newspaper reports of the day liked to put it, in devastating blazes). Typhus, cholera, and influenza swept through the area at regular intervals. Gambling dens and bordellos thrived while the police looked the other way. Robbery and murder were commonplace, keeping city reporters on their toes. The streets were a hazard in their own right. One of thousands of horses hauling the city’s carts, carriages, hansom cabs, omnibuses, and streetcars might bolt at any moment, their transports careening into bystanders.
Nellie pounded the Park Row pavement in vain. The gatekeepers at the Tribune, the Times, the Sun, the World, the Herald, and the Mail and Express, who turned away aspiring reporters every day, were unimpressed by her Pittsburgh portfolio.
To scrape by that first summer in New York, Nellie wrote freelance articles for her old newspaper, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, where she had made her start and a (literal) name for herself. They were the sort of Sunday style stories she hated, about the rage for puffed sleeves among fashionable New York women, for example.
Around the time that her money and patience were beginning to run out, the Dispatch forwarded a letter from a young Pittsburgh woman. An aspiring journalist wanted Nellie’s advice: Was New York the place to get a start? Could a woman writer make her mark there?
Nellie must have wanted to laugh out loud at the irony. But then an idea struck. What if she called on the editors of New York’s six most influential newspapers, on behalf of the Dispatch, to harvest their thoughts on this very subject? She would “obtain the opinion of the newspaper gods of Gotham” and, at the same time, gain audience with the men who held her future in their ink-stained hands.
The first paper she visited was the Sun. As she climbed the dim spiral staircase to the third-floor newsroom...
Reviews-
November 23, 2015 Readers meet Elizabeth Jane Cochran (aka Nellie Bly) on the eve of her illustrious journalism career in the opening pages of Noyes’s (Plague in the Mirror) biography. Over 13 chapters, this story of the innovative, bootstrapping Bly reveals her many juxtaposed traits (“as frivolous as she was socially earnest, as funny and self-deprecating as she was proud and haughty” writes Noyes in a closing note). The winding narrative initially focuses on Bly’s undercover work, getting committed to a New York City asylum and reporting on its appalling conditions, then recounts her other accomplishments, including circumnavigating the globe in fewer than 80 days and other stunt-style assignments, many of which championed the socially downtrodden. Numerous sidebars and interspersed spreads explore Bly’s childhood and other topics, but while these frequent diversions provide useful context, they are also distracting, forcing shifts in readers’ attention every few pages. Still, Noyes’s thoroughly researched account, with archival photos and myriad quotes from Bly’s own work, offers a well-rounded look at a self-possessed women who was nothing if not resilient. Ages 10–up. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management.
November 15, 2015 As the title implies, this biography focuses largely on reporter Nellie Bly's 10 grim days in a New York City insane asylum for women in 1887, which influenced public opinion and gained her instant celebrity. Bly's famous 1889 trip around the world, inspired by the Jules Verne novel and followed closely by thousands of newspaper readers, is covered in less detail but with plenty of pizzazz. The brisk narrative draws from Bly's own writings and from biographies, skillfully incorporating quotations, dialogue, and well-chosen facts. The overall tone is admiring, but the balanced text also acknowledges criticism of her kind of "stunt" reporting and touches briefly on problems in her personal life. While Bly's work life is presented chronologically, her earlier years are spread out in a disjointed manner in sidebars throughout the book. These and other double-page sidebars are embedded in the middles of chapters, often disrupting the smooth flow of the story. Plentiful black-and-white photographs, cartoons, newspaper pages, and artifacts expand the sense of time and place. Noyes sets Bly's life and career in context, especially with regard to limitations on women and condescending attitudes toward their abilities. A lively biography that reflects the spirit of the intrepid reporter. (author's note, source notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 11-14)
COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from December 1, 2015
Gr 6 Up-Daring? Turbulent? Madwoman? When a book's title includes those words, readers are bound to be inspired to open it. When the book is as well done as this one is, readers will stay through the last page. About half of the narrative is devoted to the 10 days that journalist Nellie Bly spent undercover in an asylum for mentally ill women (and women who were put there unjustly by their families). Given the high drama of these real-life events, the author's matter-of-fact writing style keeps the narrative from veering toward sensationalism. Passages from Bly's newspaper article about the experience are threaded into the narrative, thereby keeping her vibrant viewpoint as the dramatic center. The rest of the volume covers Bly's other exploits, personal and professional: her venture around the world in a record-breaking 72 days, her interview with imprisoned anarchist Emma Goldman, and her own marriage at 31 to septuagenarian millionaire Robert Seaman. The illustrations are a mix of straightforward archival photos and surreal retouched photos a la Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk, 2011). Because the former are captioned with historical facts and the latter are not captioned at all, it is easy to tell the difference between the actual images and the fanciful. Noyes makes history accessible and irresistible in this thrilling account of women's lives, flagrant abuse, scandal, courage, and tenacity. The source notes are extensive, and the research is impeccable. VERDICT This excellent work is a natural fit for units on history, biography, and social studies.-Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Libraries, NC
Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2015 Grades 5-8 In 1887, Nellie Bly left Pittsburgh for New York City to find fame as a journalist. Initially, what she found was poverty and rejection. But what Nellie Bly lacked in education and opportunities, she made up for in courage and determination. Soon she made her mark by becoming an inmate at the infamous insane asylum on Blackwell's Island and reporting on the harrowing conditions there. Next came her around-the-world journey, which brought worldwide recognition. Noyes details these two important experiences and describes others in a well-researched biography that includes copious quotes from Bly and her contemporaries. While the book focuses on Bly as an adult, one-, two-, and four-page features appearing throughout the book offer information on related topics and sometimes fill in facts about her early years. Readers will also learn about Bly's era, particularly the difficulties faced by a woman attempting to support herself and her family. Many period photos and prints illustrate the text. A good, readable introduction to a fascinating vanguard.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
Title Information+
Publisher
Penguin Young Readers Group
Kindle Book
Release date:
OverDrive Read
Release date:
Adobe EPUB eBook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original
Deborah Noyes
Error!
Please close the window and try again.
Buy it now and support our digital library!
Ten Days a Madwoman
The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original
Deborah Noyes
A portion of your purchase goes to support your digital library.
Sorry, no retailers are currently available for this title. Please check back later.
| Sign In
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
Renewing this title won't extend your lending period. Instead, it will let you borrow the title again immediately after your first lending period expires.
You can't renew this title because there are holds on it. However, you can join the holds list and be notified when it becomes available for you to borrow again.
