In 1885, Elizabeth Jane Cochran -- pen name, Nellie Bly -- was hired as one of the first female journalists after writing a scathing rebuttal to a misogynist newspaper column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. The newspaper's editor was so taken aback by Bly's incendiary prose that he posted an ad asking the article's author to come work for him. Within five years, Bly had become the first "girl stunt reporter," going undercover to write wildly popular stories that no one at the time thought a woman could or should write. She committed herself to the Lunatic Asylum at Blackwell's Island for ten days to expose the abysmal treatment of the patients and later traveled around the world alone in seventy-two days, breaking Jules Verne's fictional record by eight days. This volume is the only existing printed and edited collection of work by one of America's most famous journalists, an irresistible hero to girls, women, and adventurers everywhere. -- page 4 of cover.