Cochrane decided her new pen name would be “Nelly Bly,” a character from a popular ditty composed by American songwriter and fellow Pennsylvanian, Stephen Foster. Foster's verses sang of meritorious menial labor and of love. A few lines go like this:

Nelly Bly hab a voice like de turtle dove,
I hear it in de meadow and I hear it in de grove.

Nelly Bly hab a heart warm as it can be,
And bigger dan de sweet potato down in Tennessee.

Heigh! Nelly Ho! Nelly, listen, lub, to me,
I'll sing for you and play for you a dulcem melody.

You get the picture. The song serves up some romantic and rather tongue-in-cheek rhetoric. Cochrane's editor misspelled Nelly as Nellie, and the mistake stuck. And while, to her audience, Nellie's message may have sounded like anything but the gentle cooing of a turtle dove, her words nevertheless got the attention they seemed to demand from their readers.

From there, the writing career of one Nellie Bly grew by leaps and bounds. Her methods became increasingly investigative, and her subjects increasingly social in nature. Some of her reports helped shed light on the terrible living conditions of impoverished communities and the below-standard treatment of women in insane asylums.

From traveling through Mexico to going undercover in a mental hospital and posing as a patient suffering from mental illness, Bly's work stands out for her personal investment in the story and her relentless dedication to digging beneath the surface.

The Bold Life of Nellie Bly, Journalist and Adventurer

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