​In March, I published a piece on Susan B. Anthony, and while researching some parts of her life and deciding what to include in my post, I came across an in-depth interview that she gave to Nellie Bly, culturing best known for her Jules Verne-esque trip around the world in less than eighty days (72 in point of fact). I bookmarked it for a later post and finding out Nellie Bly’s birthday and then planning this week after that to focus on her work.

I think I was kind of taken with the idea that these two great, pioneering  women not only lived in the same era, but crossed paths in such a way to make an impact one hundred twenty years later. This conversation is the exemplification of a study of women’s history.  In a lot of ways, I can envision myself following in their footsteps through suffrage, journalism (writing), traveling, and it’s amazing. I don’t think I take voting for granted, but I absolutely feel it’s everyone’s right, but also obligation to vote in every election, not just the big ones. They’re all big ones. Nellie Bly sending in that first letter to the editor is just the essence of confidence that I aspire to. When asked, I still respond with a question mark after ‘I’m a writer’. I didn’t feel it at the time I was traveling, but in retrospect I do feel the Nellie Bly adventure vibe in my solo trip to Wales. In the moment, it was an adventure, but it was also scary, and in reading about her trip around the world, I don’t get the scared feeling from her. I will actually begin her own writing of her trip, and I hope to share my thoughts with you towards the end of the week.

In the meantime, these links will take you back to the late nineteenth century and you can fill yourself with our ancestors and inspirations.

Original New York World newspaper article, digitized

Easier to read in The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Volume IV: An Awful Hush 1895-1906, edited by Ann B. Gordon (Nellie Bly interviews Susan B. Anthony)