Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2021, 184 pages

“I want to go around [the world] in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg’s record. May I try it?”

The idea came from Nellie Bly, a journalist with The New York World, inspired by the Jules Verne book, Around the World in 80 Days. It was 1888, a time when women did not travel alone, never mind try to circumnavigate the globe. It was impossible: she would need a protector, be loaded down with lots of luggage, and be hampered by the fact that she could only speak English.

But Bly eventually won the day. She was summoned to her editor’s office almost exactly a year later and asked to leave in two days. To prove the naysayers wrong, she travelled on her own, carrying a small Gladstone bag (known as a gripsack) with a single dress, which lasted her entire trip. And she did it in 72 days.

Rosemary J. Brown is also a journalist and a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. She wants to “put women explorers back ‘on the map’”, to “revive a role model, an invincible woman who defied the status quo, walked on the wild side and explored the world without fear.” In 2014, 125 years after Bly’s record-breaking trip, she decides to follow in Bly’s footsteps. But the ocean liners that Bly took no longer exist, so Brown has to fly.

Bly’s journey would take her to Colombo, Sri Lanka, with her ship stopping at Port Said in Egypt and Aden in Yemen. She continued to Singapore (where she bought a monkey, McGinty, who caused no end of trouble) and Hong Kong, where she was stuck for a few days. Not one to sit still, she sailed to Canton (present-day Guangzhou) in China. The US government had blocked the entry of the Chinese with the 1872 Chinese Exclusion Act. “I knew that we were trying to keep the Chinese out of America so I decided to see all of them while in their land”, wrote Bly.

She then went on to Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan, from where she took a ship to San Francisco. Brown follows her trajectory, except that she goes straight to Colombo, because of the war in Yemen.

Brown is like a detective, looking for traces of Bly wherever she goes. Things have changed a great deal in over a century, but Brown makes connections between Bly’s world and the present: one of the hotels is, incredibly, still around (these are good hotels – no rundown hostels for Bly!), as are some of the temples and other sights.

Brown, like Bly, is an intrepid traveller. In Hong Kong, she braved the fierce winds and lashing rain of typhoon Kalmaegi to catch the morning train to Guangzhou. She needed a taxi but the typhoon meant that the normally busy streets were deserted. Then, in the distance, a solitary taxi appeared, and Brown made the train. It was as if Bly was watching over her, holding out a helping hand.

I enjoyed seeing places through the eyes of the two women, so far apart in time but sharing a curiosity about the world. I loved learning about what travel was like in the late 1800s, and also about Bly’s work as a journalist, a woman in a man’s world. Brown carries a copy of Bly’s book and quotes from it frequently, so you get a real sense of the woman. I had not heard of Nellie Bly until I read this book. She was a fascinating woman and should be better known. This book goes a long way towards filling that gap.

Read the Talking About Interview with Rosemary J. Brown.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.