Karen S. H. Roggenkamp
Department of Literature and Languages
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Karen_Roggenkamp@tamu-commerce.edu

 My talk today catches a different angle of the Bly story, that having to do with the late nineteenth-century literary marketplace, and more specifically the magazine Cosmopolitan, a forgotten rival to Bly and the New York World.  By the end of the century, publishers and critics routinely divided the American reading public into discrete market segments.  Rather than directing most publications toward a general reading audience, they frequently marketed texts to specific populations. Certain books and periodicals, for instance, gained cultural authority and were meant for genteel, well-educated audiences (and of course for readers who aspired to be genteel and well-educated).  Other publications met the growing needs of a theoretically lower-class, sensation-hungry audience.

Cosmopolitan was a magazine struggling to find its way in this marketplace, which was becoming increasingly complicated and crowded.  The high-toned monthly was only three years old and already in its death throes when John Brisben Walker bought it in 1889. Desperately needing a larger pool of subscribers, Walker envisioned a magazine that could meet a mass audience’s taste for spectacle, but that wouldn’t in the mean time sacrifice its identity as a periodical fit for more elite palates as well.  He tried, in other words, to straddle and stretch the lines between “dignity” and “sensationalism,” as one of his contemporaries put it.  As soon as he heard of Bly’s departure on her whirlwind trip, Walker sent one of his female writers, named Elizabeth Bisland, on her own trip around the world, traveling in the opposite direction.  He viewed this new and modern travel story as the ideal opportunity for promoting his magazine to both mass and genteel audiences.  The result was that Bly and Bisland, the two lady travel-journalists, came to act as emissaries for quite different periodicals, which were operating within a highly competitive and segmented literary marketplace. And Walker demonstrated that despite an apparent “loss” to the World and to the sensationalism of new journalism, he, Bisland, and Cosmopolitan in fact succeeded in the race for success in the literary marketplace.

 Within a culture inundated with print and increasingly bored with conventional travel writing, the New York World found the novelty it needed in—appropriately enough—a novel. By having Bly test whether one really could go around the world in eighty days, the newspaper gave the journey-quest an attractive, marketable framing.  Editors devised imaginative ploys to ensure this story would prove an enormous financial success.  They sponsored a national guessing match to predict the exact hour and minute of Bly’s return home; they published songs and poems celebrating her exploits; and they sponsored interviews with Jules Verne to lend credibility to their marketing stunt.  And the World’s efforts paid off: circulation rose to unprecedented highs.
 The World was successful with its travel writing because it understood the literary marketplace so well.  The idea of speeding around the world resonated with an immense group of readers who were already versed in the tradition of travel writing, but who were also looking for something more exciting.  Unlike other travel narratives that would, as one article put it, “crowd upon the shelves of libraries” and remain unread (14 Nov. 1889), Bly’s narrative was as timely and provocative as the newspaper in which it appeared.  Here, the speed of the trip became the real story, rather than the sights seen during travel.  The conventional journey story was transformed into a race against time and fiction, practically ensuring its mass popularity in a culture entranced by “the real” and “the new.”

 The New York World, then, met the expectations of a large segment of the literary marketplace, and even generated new expectations for sensationalism within that segment.  In this achievement, Bly and the newspaper serve as vital points of contrast for Elizabeth Bisland, John Brisben Walker, and Cosmopolitan.  Walker obviously did not want to lose his current small pool of readers, which meant he must meet their expectations for something aesthetic and refined.  But if he wanted to enlarge his readership, he also must answer the pressures put forth by new journalism, with its spiraling circulations—in order to survive financially, he had to appeal at least in part to that enormous audience that loved sensation.  And so Walker, as one friendly critic said, “introduced the newspaper ideas of timeliness and dignified sensationalism into periodical literature” (qtd. in Mott 482), drawing upon two forms of periodicals and two segments of the literary marketplace, and seeking an identity somewhere in between.

Walker recognized the World’s spin on traditional travel writing as a chance to put “timeliness and dignified sensationalism” into practice himself.  Determined to insinuate himself into the stunt and make it a race between women and between periodicals, Walker increased the stakes by betting a World editor $1,000 that Bisland would beat Bly (Journalist 16 Nov. 1889).  The editor, not about to grant publicity to a competitor, of course refused the bet.

 Despite Walker’s risk of such money, and the special trains and steamers he tried to hire for Bisland,  the Cosmopolitan team literally lost the race against Bly and the World, clocking in at seventy-six days.  And at first glance it would seem Walker also lost the fundamental marketplace race as well.  Though he promoted Bisland’s and Cosmopolitan’s names in conjunction with Bly’s and the World’s, few sources gave Walker credence.  Of course Pulitzer’s World ignored Bisland, but other newspapers underplayed the race between women as well.  The Times and the Tribune, sworn enemies of the World in New York, included only obscure notices regarding Bisland’s return from, quote, “her long trip,” buried in back pages (“Miss Bisland Arrives” and “Miss Bisland Completes Her Long Trip”).  Papers from other parts of the country were even more dismissive.  The Boston Globe covered Bly’s travels extensively, but mentioned Bisland only once in passing (“Miss Bisland Isn’t In It”).  And the Chicago Tribune refused to mention either Bisland or Cosmopolitan by name, instead huffing that, quote, “we are glad [Bly] has beaten the other young woman, who took unfair advantages at the start and tried to keep [Bly] back at the antipodes” (Editorial).  Clearly, some people did know another woman was racing against Bly, but the consensus among newspaper editors seemed to be that she deserved little space.  Only one national newspaper I surveyed, the San Francisco Examiner, gave Bisland significant copy, and that’s because she stopped over before crossing the Pacific.  Furthermore, by the time Bly reached the West Coast, she was earning significantly more space in the Examiner than Bisland had.

 But if major U. S. newspapers essentially ignored Bisland and Cosmopolitan, some magazines vigorously scoffed at Bly, the World, and new journalism in general.  The Journalist, for instance, a professional mouthpiece for those with elite tastes, devoted several blurbs and a lead article to Bisland, exaggerating that “the entire press of the country is discussing the trip undertaken by Miss Bisland,” and drawing a barbed comparison between an unnamed “World correspondent” and the beloved Miss Bisland, who, quote, “is in no sense a sensational writer, but a lady of the most charming manners” (30 Nov. 1889).
But here was a problem with Walker’s attempts at “dignified sensationalism,” and at speaking to two seemingly discrete segments of the literary marketplace at once.  Publications like the Journalist wanted to draw a line between the kind of sensationalism hawked by newsboys on street corners, and the kind “dignified” enough to appear in the pages of a quality monthly.  And so they emphasized what they considered to be Bisland’s most important qualities—she was ladylike, refined, literary; and she would appeal to readers who shared those qualities.  What Walker had done by sending Bisland out after Bly was risky, in terms of his supporters and established readers.  He was, after all, following the lead of a sensational newspaper.  And even a Cosmopolitan writer had sniffed that “sensation mongering . . . has given rise to one of the worst literary fashions of our age, and one that threatens to degrade the periodical press into a mere pen-and-ink dime museum” (Andrews 156). Yet, here was Cosmopolitan, participating in sensation mongering, and even trying to make it more sensational.

It may come as no surprise, then, that Walker himself slid away from sensation when Cosmopolitan published the full story of Bisland’s travels after she returned.  Though Walker’s goal was to boost circulation, he at least publicly defined his audience not as the excited masses who would scoop up the daily news, but as readers who would cherish those older forms of travel writing the World had dismissed at the beginning of Bly’s trip.  Cosmopolitan’s audience was to include, as Matthew Schneirov puts it, the “gentle reader,” someone “sitting by his fireside” for whom “reading comes to be a kind of [leisurely] conversation” with quality writing (55).  Here is precisely the image of calm and gentle reading reproduced in the graphic that headed Cosmopolitan’s “In the Library” feature each month, where a woman rests by the fireplace, open book in hand.

Walker probably had little choice but to return to more romantic ideas about travel writing and reading.  For Elizabeth Bisland did whatever she could to distance herself from the sensation of the trip and to overplay the dignity of her travels.  And at this juncture, the story becomes less a drama between publishers within the marketplace, than a drama between Walker and his emissary, or his intended version of Nellie Bly.  First and foremost, Bisland considered herself a lady of literature who scoffed at the fast-paced newspaper business.  Indeed, she later wrote that the newspaper revealed little more than a “caricature of life,” and she wanted her writing to be a deeper, poetic force that could shape “the thoughts” of “the masses” (At the Sign 140).

Bisland’s romantic urge is evident in her writing, especially when compared to Bly’s.  Where Bly’s account breezes by, Bisland takes on a lyrical, serious tone.  I’ve supplied a couple of examples of that tone on your handout, and this fundamental difference is also neatly evident when we compare how each describes her initial voyage at sea.  Bly spends no fewer than four pages describing in rather surprising and funny detail her bout with sea-sickness, and how she continually rushes to the ship’s railings for, quote, “a little unbridling of pent-up emotion” (21).  Bisland, quite in contrast, sees life at sea through romantic reverie.  “America sinks out of sight, slowly,” she writes,

a vision of green hills in level sunshine. . . . The wind of the coming night is cold, and the fluttering paper prayers the Chinese passengers cast overboard to insure a safe voyage it catches and whips sharply away, like autumn leaves falling in the November night.                                                                                  (In Seven Stages 32)

But most explicitly, Bisland repeats that despite the sensational circumstances of her travels, she is hardly a tool of sensation herself.  While Bly begs her editor to let her travel, Bisland complains to hers that her social calendar is simply too full for a world tour: she has, after all, an appointment with her dressmaker and a dinner party planned.  Furthermore, she resists out of propriety—only a vulgar woman (like Bly, implicitly) would undergo such a journey willingly, for it would doubtless bring unwanted notoriety.  She writes,

I had appeared in the papers only as the contributor of unsigned articles, and the amount of distress I experienced when I first saw my name in a headline was so far beyond even my anticipations that I then and there registered a vow— . . . I resolved  . . . that they would never have reason to put my name in a head line again.
                                                                                                                                        (In Seven Stages 4-5)

Bisland’s discomfort with the role of sensational traveler is again evident when she arrives in San Francisco.  She complains about the “delegation” of “martyrs to curiosity” “who had got wind of my eccentric performance and came with no other credentials than a desire to gape.”  These sensation mongers “had afflicted me sorely . . . sending up their cards in the hotel” with a “desire to look at me—presumably as a sort of inexpensive freak show” (In Seven Stages 29).  This is exactly the attention Bly thrives upon, but again, Bisland distances herself from the World traveler as much as possible.

So what are we to make of Bisland’s performance as dignified lady traveler, only marginally and unwillingly associated with the evils of sensationalism?  At first glance it would seem her writing, her self-presentation, and her longer travel time all signaled a real loss for John Brisben Walker in his competition against Pulitzer’s newspaper, and in his competition for a wider share of the literary marketplace.

But questions about Walker’s winning or losing—and about Bisland’s alleged dislike of notoriety as well—merit another look.  For despite some technical losses, the venture signaled a latent victory for both of them. Bisland’s travel writing did bring attention to her name and introduced her to Kipling and other authors (Williams 688).  The Cosmopolitan installments of her long travel account, which ran from January until August 1890, coincided with Nellie Bly’s national lecture tour.  So although the trip was “old news,” Bisland was still riding, to some degree, the wave of Bly’s fame long after journey’s end; and she subsequently sold a book version of her narrative to Harper and Row.  Bisland then continued a respectable career, publishing essays and novels, and editing the letters of Lafcadio Hearn.

As for Cosmopolitan, Walker reported that the travel series actually profited the magazine, quote, “a figure which seems incredible” (Review of Reviews 608).  Cosmopolitan eventually found financial success and a firm identity in the 1890s based on precisely such stunts as the Bisland trip; for circulation rose from 20,000 when Walker purchased the magazine in 1889, to 60,000 by 1892, to over 300,000 a decade later (Mott 484).  As these statistics suggest, Walker discovered not only the necessity, but also the profitability of transgressing apparent market-segment lines.  Buoyed by ironic victory with the Bisland affair, Walker continued to develop a hybrid of older genteel magazine styles and newer, flashier newspaper tactics to turn Cosmopolitan around, just as other new magazines also entered a booming marketplace and tried to establish themselves as somehow both dignified and sensational.  And when in 1905 Walker finally sold Cosmopolitan to William Randolph Hearst, who was Joseph Pulitzer’s arch-rival, it was only because he had earned enough capital for other pursuits (Mott 491).

The case of Elizabeth Bisland’s “flying trip around the world” for Cosmopolitan finally highlights how much the shifting ideas about readers, genres, and mass communication were affecting the way texts were framed and presented in a segmented literary marketplace.  John Brisben Walker realized these changes would force competition with the pressures of mass media.  No longer could an un-established periodical survive on a small coterie of gentle readers.  Rather, Walker astutely saw the potential in blending genteel magazine practices with the new journalism of urban America.  But tensions were invariably situated within the dualism of quality and quantity, dignity and sensation:  tensions between the expectations within each segment of the market, and tensions between the players involved in textual production as well.  Both Walker and Bisland revealed discomfort with their dual roles of aesthetes and promoters, even as they gladly reaped the benefits of an enlarged marketplace.  These conflicts would only continue to challenge writers and editors as the publishing world dealt with mass marketability at the turn of the century.

Andrews, E. F. “Fashions in Literature.”  Cosmopolitan 9 (1890): 125-128.
“Around the World.” New York World 14 Nov. 1889: 1.
Bisland, Elizabeth.  In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891.
           Originally published in Cosmopolitan, January-July 1890.
“Bly Against Bisland.”  San Francisco Examiner 19 November 1889: 1-2.
“Circling the Globe.”  San Francisco Examiner 20 November 1889: 1.
Editorial.  Chicago Tribune 26 January 1890: 12.
Editorial.  Journalist 25 January 1890: 9.
Forman, Allan.  Editorial.  Journalist 11 Jan. 1890: 8.
Journalist 16 November 1889: 9.
“Miss Bisland Arrives.”  New York Times 31 January 1890: 8.
“Miss Bisland Completes Her Long Trip.”  New York Tribune 31 January 1890: 12.
“Miss Bisland Isn’t In It.”  Boston Globe 26 January 1890: 2.
Mott, Frank Luther.  A History of American Magazines, 1885-1905.  Cambridge: Belknap P, 1957.
“Nellie Bly Hastens On.”  San Francisco Examiner 22 Jan. 1890: 1-2.
Reed, David.  The Popular Magazine in Britain and the United States, 1880-1960.  Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997.
Review of Reviews 5 (1892): 607-610.
Schneirov, Matthew.  The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893-1914.  New York:
            Columbia UP, 1994.