Nellie Bly Merchandise and the Changing American Woman: A Material Culture Study

Abstract

When stunt reporter Elizabeth Cochran, better known as Nellie Bly, encircled the globe in a 72-day dash in late 1889, she became a national celebrity. Riding the wave of her fame, merchandisers across the country put her name and face on all types of products, from a night lamp to flower varieties to a woman’s hat. This material culture study of Bly-branded merchandise between 1889 and 1922 suggests this ephemera contains insights into the culture which produced them and shows that while traditional gender roles pervaded society throughout the height of Bly’s fame, both sexes recognized women’s increasingly growing agency and economic power. While it may not have been socially acceptable for most middle- and upper-class white women to take on public roles outside the home, the success of Bly merchandise suggests that women’s purchasing power enabled them to live vicariously through other women, like Bly, who did.

Notes

1 Nellie Bly, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 148.

2 Jean Marie Lutes, “Introduction,” in Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.

3 See Patricia Bradley, Women and the Press: The Struggle for Equality (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005); Marion Marzolf, Up From the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (New York: Communication Arts Books, 1977); Elizabeth Jordan, Three Rousing Cheers (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1938); Karen Roggenkamp, Sympathy, Madness, & Crime: How Four Nineteenth-Century Journalists Made the Newspaper Women’s Business (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2016); Brooke Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (United States: Times Books, 1994); Karen Roggenkamp, Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2005); Ishbel Ross, Ladies of the Press (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936); Lutes, “Introduction,” xiii–xxiv; Jean Marie Lutes, Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Matthew Goodman, Eighty Days (New York: Ballantine Books Trade Paperbacks, 2014); Michael Schudson, Discovering the News (United States: Basic Books, 1967); Ishbel Ross, Charmers and Cranks: Twelve Famous American Women Who Defied the Conventions (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Barbara Belford, Brilliant Bylines (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Paula K. Garrett, “An ‘Unprotected’ Pilgrim; or, a New Woman in the Old World: Grace Greenwood’s Self-Sexualization in the Popular Press 1875-76, 1878-79,” Women’s Writing 11, no. 2 (July 2004), 303–23.

4 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

5 C.W. Anderson and Juliette De Maeyer, “Objects of Journalism and the News,” Journalism 16, no. 1 (2015), 1.

6 Ellen M. Plante, Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1997), 11.

7 Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (Spring 1982), 3.

8 See Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 17–36.

9 Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 2; Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine, 6.

10 “Typical American Girl,” Evening World (New York), March 27, 1889.

11 Nellie Bly, “Nellie Bly’s Decision,” Evening World (New York), April 17, 1889.

12 Ibid.

13 See World (New York), October 30, 1887; World (New York), October 9, 1887; World (New York), November 6, 1887; Nellie Bly, Six Months in Mexico (New York: J.W. Lovell, 1888); World (New York), May 26, 1889; World, February 17, 1889.

14 Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 179; Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 16-17.

15 Ross, Ladies of the Press, 48.

16 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 245.

17 Nellie Bly, Ten Days in a Mad-House (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015).

18 Candi S. Carter Olson, “‘This Was No Place for a Woman’: Gender Judo, Gender Stereotypes, and World War II Correspondent Ruth Cowan,” American Journalism 34, no. 4 (2017): 427–47.

19 Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 17-22; Garrett, “An ‘unprotected’ pilgrim,” 304; Bradley, Women and the Press, 125; Goodman, Eighty Days, 203; Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 179.

20 Belford, Brilliant Bylines, 115.

21 Nellie Bly, Around the World, 146.

22 Ibid.; Jason Marks, Around the World in 72 Days: The Race Between Pulitzer’s Nellie Bly and Cosmopolitan’s Elizabeth Bisland (New York: Gemittarius Press, 1990), 15.

23 Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly’s Book: Around the World in 72 Days, ed. Ira Peck (Brookfield, CN: Twenty-First Century Books, 1998), 14–15.

24 Tracey Greaves, “Nellie Bly’s Trip,” World (New York), December 8, 1889.

25 E. McClung Fleming, “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model,” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (1974), 153–73; Prown, “Mind in Matter,” 1.

26 Ibid., 1–19.

27 Jules D. Prown, “Material/Culture: Can the Farmer and the Cowman Still Be Friends?,” in Learning from Things: Method and Theory of Material Culture Studies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 19–34.

28 Susan Keith, “Horseshoes, Stylebooks, Wheels, Poles, and Dummies: Objects of Editing Power in 20th Century Newsrooms,” Journalism 16, no. 1 (2015), 45; Barbara Friedman, “Editor’s Note: Is That a Thing? The Twitching Document and the Talking Object,” American Journalism 31, no. 3 (2014), 307–311.

29 Anderson and De Maeyer, “Objects of Journalism and the News,” 4.

30 Ibid., 4–9.

31 Ibid., 10; See Fleming, “Artifact Study” 158.

32 Prown, “Mind in Matter,” 10.

33 Lisa Wood, “Brands and Brand Equity: Definition and Management,” Management Decisim 38, no. 9 (2000): 662.

34 Kroeger, Nellie Bly, 150.

35 Bly, Around the World, 121.

36 “Free Trip to Europe!,” Evening World (New York), November 29, 1889.

37 Bonnie Carr O’Neill, Literary Celebrity and Public Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017), 6.

38 Ellis Cashmore and Andrew Parker, “One David Beckham? Celebrity, Masculinity, and the Soccerati,” Sociology of Sport Journal 20 (2003), 218.

39 “EXTRA WELCOME!” Evening World, January 25, 1890; Cashmore and Parker, “One David Beckham?,” 214–31.

40 Belford, Brilliant Bylines, 121.

41 “Sorting Out the Guesses,” Evening World (New York), January 27, 1890.

42 “EXTRA WELCOME!” Evening World (New York), January 25, 1890

43 See note 34, 181–182.

44 Charles D. Blake, Nellie Bly’s Tour Around the World, Triumphant March and Gallop (Boston: Charles D. Blake & Co., 1890); Rudolph Gras, Nellie Bly Puzzle, Trademark 17,589, registered February 25, 1890; Fulton and Bro. Plug and Chewing Tobacco, Trademark 18,012, registered June 10, 1890; Ross, Charmers and Cranks, 201.

45 See Goodman, Eighty Days, 330–331.

46 Ellis Cashmore, Celebrity Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 6–7.

47 See Finola Kerrigan et al., “‘Spinning’ Warhol: Celebrity Brand Theoretics and Logic of the Celebrity Brand,” Journal of Marketing Management 27, no. 13–14 (December 2011), 1511.

48 Lenard R. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture: Famous Women in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 4 (2004), 65–91; See also Simon Morgan, “Celebrity: Academic ‘pseudo-Event’ or a Useful Concept for Historians?,” Cultural and Social History 8, no. 1 (2011), 95–114.

49 Roggenkamp, Narrating the News, 48.

50 Ibid., 33.

51 Lutes, Front-Page Girls, 22.

52 Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876–1915 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 157.

53 Ibid.

54 Rudolph Gras, Nellie Bly Puzzle, Trademark 17,589, registered February 25, 1890.

55 The dish was likely used as a keepsake, not for everyday wear, as the deep grooves would have made it difficult to clean. William G. Walter, Design for a Dish, US Patent 19,764, filed February 25, 1890, and issued April 15, 1890.

56 D.C. Giles, Illusions of Impartiality: A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 556; Elizabeth Duthie et al., “The Effectiveness of Celebrities in Conservation Marketing,” PLoS ONE 12, no. 7 (July 7, 2017), 1509.

57 Ibid.

58 Roberson v. Rochester Folding Box Co., 171 N.Y. 538, 64 N.E. 442 (1902); Pavesich v. New England Life Ins. Co., 122 Ga. 190, 50 S.E. 68 (1905).

59 Christopher Pesce, “The Likeness Monster: Should the Right of Publicity Protect Against Imitation?,” New York University Law Review 782 (1990), 3; See also Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 193 (1890), 193–220.

60 See H.J. Myers, Nellie Bly, 1890, photoprint on cabinet card, Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/89711960; Elizabeth Cochrane “Nellie Bly”, head-and-shoulders portrait, 1890, photographic print, Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2006686293; Nellie Bly, February 21, 1890, photographic print, Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2004671937.

61 See note 43.

62 David Mayer, “‘Quote the Words to Prompt the Attitudes’: The Victorian Performer, the Photographer, and the Photograph,” Theatre Survey 43, no. 2 (November 2002), 228.

63 Advertisement. World (New York), January 31, 1890.

64 See Advertisement, Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1890; “Correspondence,” American Stationer, December 18, 1890, XXVIII edition; Fulton and Bro. Plug and Chewing Tobacco, Trademark 18,012, registered June 10, 1890; Advertisement, Ladies’ Home Journal, April 1890.

65 Plante, Women at Home, XI; Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 38.

66 Schlereth, Victorian America, 167.

67 Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 114.

68 Monika Djerf-Pierre, “The Gender of Journalism: The Structure and Logic of the Field in the Twentieth Century,” Nordicom Review, no. Jubilee Issue (2007), 86.

69 Schlereth, Victorian America, 163.

70 Ibid.

71 See J. W. Brown & Co., High Grade Canned Goods, No. 103 Arch Street, Phila. (Philadelphia, ca. 1890); Nellie Bly Bye and Bye, Dew Drop Canned Goods, J.W. Brown & Co., retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, accessed November 14, 2020, http://digital.libraries.psu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/amc/id/313. 

72 Nellie Bly Bye and Bye.

73 J. W. Brown & Co., High Grade Canned Goods, No. 103 Arch Street, Phila. (Philadelphia, ca. 1890).

74 See Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

75 Plante, Women at Home, 2.

76 Evening World (New York), January 30, 1890. See also “A Friendless Waif,” World, June 26, 1890.

77 See Advertisement. Harper’s Bazaar, March 8, 1890, 192; Dithridge & Co., “Nellie Bly” brand Lamps for Burning Kerosene Oil, Trademark 17,863, registered May 6, 1890.

78 Schlereth, Victorian America, 114.

79 Ibid., 114–115.

80 Ibid., 137.

81 See Seed Catalogue, 1893, 1893; Seed Catalogue, 1906, 1906.

82 Seed Catalogue, 1894, 1894.

83 Schlereth, Victorian America, 127; Plante, Women at Home, 176–177.

84 Ross, Charmers and Cranks; Schudson, Discovering the News.

85 Lady Colin Campbell, ed., Etiquette of Good Society (London: Cassell and Campany Limited, 1893).

86 Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 249.

87 Garrett discusses the travels of Grace Greenwood and other female traveler writers who emphasized their femininity in order to push gender boundaries. See Garrett, “An ‘Unprotected’ Pilgrim,” 303–23.

88 Lears, Fables of Abundance, 1.

89 S.C. Foster, Nelly Bly (New York: Firth, Pond and Co., 1850).

90 Schlereth, Victorian America, 211.

91 Joe Hart, Globe Trotting Nellie Bly (New York: Willis Woodward & Co., 1890). See also Charles D. Blake, Nellie Bly’s Tour Around the World, Triumphant March and Gallop (Boston: Charles D. Blake & Co., 1890).

92 Garrett, “An ‘Unprotected’ Pilgrim,” 305.

93 Sears 1949 Midwinter Sale, 1949.

94 “Novel Savings Banks,” American Stationer, July 24, 1890, XXVIII edition. See also Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 107.

95 Nellie Bly, On the Fly, Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills, trade card, 1889.

96 Charlotte Nicklas, “‘It Is the Hat That Matters the Most’: Hats, Propriety and Fashion in British Fiction, 1890-1930,” Costume 51, no. 1 (2017), 80.

97 Oriole Cullen, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones (London: V&A Publishing, 2009), 146.

98 Madeleine Ginsburg, The Hat: Trends and Traditions (New York: Barron’s, 1990), 97.

99 Plante, Women at Home, 131.

100 See Advertisement, World (New York), September 9, 1890; Advertisement, World (New York), September 15, 1890.

101 Advertisement. Washington Post, September 4, 1890.

102 See “City Items,” Daily American (Nashville, TN), September 7, 1890; Advertisement, Chicago Daily Tribune, September 7, 1890; Advertisement, Cincinnati Enquirer, October 12, 1890; “City Items,” Daily American (Nashville, TN), October 19, 1890; “City Items,” Daily American, October 20, 1890; “City Items,” Daily American (Nashville, TN), November 2, 1890.

103 Advertisement. Daily American (Nashville, TN), September 23, 1890.

104 See Advertisement, Cincinnati Enquirer, October 18, 1890; Advertisement, Daily American (Nashville, TN), September 21, 1890.

105 Schlereth, Victorian America, 78–80. According to Schlereth, a seamstress earning approximately $260 a year might have spent $18 on clothing.

106 Lears, Fables of Abundance, 43.

107 Advertisement. Daily American (Nashville, TN), September 28, 1890.

108 J.A. Grozier, Round the World with Nellie Bly, game (New York: McLoughlin Brothers, 1890).

109 Goodman, Eighty Days.

110 Patti Lyle Collins, “What Children Ask of Santa Claus,” Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1898.

111 Margaret K. Hofer, The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), 13.

112 Ibid., 148.

113 See note 34, 185.

114 Ibid., 185; “Amusements,” Washington Post, March 4, 1890; “Entertainments,” Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), February 20, 1890; Advertisement, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), (March 17, 1890; Advertisement, Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1890; “IN HER NATIVE CITY,” World (New York), January 25, 1890.

115 See note 34, 308–309, 320.

116 Advertisement, Evening World (New York), July 4, 1890.

117 Advertisement, Washington Post, March 4, 1890.

118 See note 115.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Autumn Lorimer Linford

Autumn Lorimer Linford is a Roy H. Park Fellow in the Hussman School of Media & Journalism at University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She studies media history, with an emphasis on turn of the twentieth century women journalists.