Digital Resources

The Library's website includes a variety of primary source materials related to Nellie Bly including newspaper articles, images, books, and more. Listed below are relevant digital collections and other online resources compiled from across the website.

Chronicling America

Chronicling America
This collection includes newspapers covering the time period from 1789 to 1963. Contributors represent most states and some U.S. territories. It is a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Selected highlights from this collection:

Country Studies

Country Studies
This collection contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world. Nellie Bly’s travels took her 28,000 miles. Her trip included several of the countries presented in this collection.

Selected highlights from this collection:

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
This collection documents achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes. Photos and data pertaining to the historical buildings of Blackwell’s Island can be found by searching on “Blackwell’s Island” or “Welfare Island.”

Selected highlight from this collection:

Welfare Island, Insane Asylum, New York County, NY

Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies
Thomas Edison's laboratory was responsible for the invention of the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Motion pictures became a successful entertainment industry in less than a decade, with single-viewer Kinetoscopes giving way to films projected for mass audiences. Most early examples were actualities showing famous people, news events, disasters, people at work, new modes of travel and technology, scenic views, expositions, and other leisure activities. Created in 1903, Panorama of Blackwell's Island, N.Y., was photographed from a boat heading south along the eastern shore of Blackwell's Island, known today as Roosevelt Island. Included in the view is the insane asylum where Nellie Bly went undercover.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Panorama of Blackwell's Island, N.Y.

World War History: Newspaper Clippings, 1914 to 1926

World War History: Daily Records and Comments as Appeared in American and Foreign Newspapers, 1914-1926
This collection of World War I clippings covers far beyond the valuable contemporary news reports and contains war-related editorials, features, cartoons, photos, maps, and more. Front pages and full-page features of New York City newspapers are frequently presented. Nellie Bly returned to journalism after the death of her husband as a reporter for the New York Journal. Her reporting from the Austrian front is represented.

Selected highlights from this collection:

World's Transportation Commission

World's Transportation Commission
The World's Transportation Commission Photograph Collection contains nearly nine hundred images by American photographer William Henry Jackson from 1894 to 1896. Collected only a few years after Bly’s journey around the world, the photographs offer insight into some of the types of transportation she used on her journey: ship, train, jinrikisha, sampan, horse, and burro.

Selected highlights from this collection:

Related Online Resources at the Library

America's Library

This site is designed with young people in mind, but there are great stories for people of all ages. The following features are related to Nellie Bly:

Headlines & Heroes: Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print

This blog highlights the amazing stories, both real and imaginary, that we find in our collections of newspapers and comic books.

Happy International Women's Day

Online Exhibits

Women Come to the Front
Much like Nellie Bly, the women correspondents represented in this online exhibit followed various paths to their wartime assignments.

Related Research Guides

Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913
Part of the American Women Series, this essay tells the story of the parade, including the mistreatment of marchers by rowdy crowds and inept police. Nellie Bly rode as one of the heralds in the parade, and bluntly stated in the headline to her article on the march—“Suffragists Are Men's Superiors.” (New York Evening Journal, March 3, 1913, p. 3)
Nellie Bly: Topics in Chronicling America

Today in History

January 25 - Globe Trotting
On January 25, 1890, police cleared a path through a cheering crowd for reporter Nellie Bly as she stepped off a train in New York just 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds after setting sail east to prove she could circle the globe in less than 80 days.

Resources For Teachers

The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching.

Nellie Bly: A Resource Guide

Digital Resources

Chronicling America

Selected highlights from this collection:

Country Studies

Selected highlights from this collection:

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

Selected highlight from this collection:

Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

Selected highlight from this collection:

World War History: Newspaper Clippings, 1914 to 1926

Selected highlights from this collection:

World's Transportation Commission

Selected highlights from this collection:

Related Online Resources at the Library

America's Library

Headlines & Heroes: Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print

Online Exhibits

Related Research Guides

Today in History

Resources For Teachers

Lesson Plans

Presentations and Activities