Elizabeth Bisland

Early career

Bisland was born on Fairfax Plantation, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, on February 11, 1861. During the Civil War, the family fled the homestead prior to the Battle of Fort Bisland. Life was difficult when they returned, and when she was twelve the family moved to Natchez, Louisiana, site of her father's family home which he had inherited. She began her writing career as a teenager, sending poetry to the New Orleans Times Democrat using the pen name B.L.R. Dane. Once her writing activity was revealed to her family and the paper's editor, she was paid for the work, and she soon went to New Orleans to work for the paper. Around 1887, Bisland moved to New York City and got her first work from The Sun newspaper. By 1889 she was doing work for a number of publications, including the New York World. Among other outlets, she later become an editor at Cosmopolitan magazine and also contributed to the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review.

Journey around the world

In November 1889, the New York World announced that it was sending its reporter Nellie Bly around the world, in a bid to beat Phileas Fogg's fictitious 80-day journey in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Catching wind of this publicity stunt, John Brisben Walker, who had just purchased the three-year-old and still-fledging Cosmopolitan, decided to dispatch Bisland on her own journey. Six hours after being recruited, Bisland departed westward from New York. Meanwhile, Bly left on a steamer headed to Europe, both on the same day—November 14, 1889. The journeys were keenly followed by the public, though Bly, sponsored by the more sensationalistic and popular New York World (which mainly ignored Bisland), appeared to get more attention than Bisland and the genteel Cosmopolitan, which only published monthly.

Bly, racing against the 80-day benchmark, was unaware of her competition until she reached Hong Kong on December 24. There, an official of the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Company told her that she would be beaten, stating that Bisland had passed through three days prior.

Ultimately, however, Bly triumphed over Bisland. Critically, while in England, Bisland was told (and apparently believed) she had missed her intended ride, the swift German steamer Ems leaving from Southampton, even though her publisher had bribed the shipping company to delay its departure. It is unknown whether she was intentionally deceived. She was thus forced to catch the slow-going Bothnia on January 18, departing from Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, ensuring that Bly would prevail. Bly, meanwhile, raced across America on a specially chartered train to complete her journey and arrived at her final destination point in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 p.m., for a total travel time of 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes (precise time was kept, as the World advertised a contest to guess the exact moment she would arrive). Bisland's ship did not arrive in New York until January 30, so she completed her trip in 76 ¹⁄₂ days, also ahead of Fogg's fictional record.

Bisland wrote a series of articles for the Cosmopolitan on her journey, subsequently published as a book, In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around The World (1891).

Later career and personal life

Bisland's writing was of a more literary nature than her participation in the world race might indicate (and her writings were a clear contrast from the more swashbuckling style of Bly's writings on her trip). Indeed, her 1929 New York Times obituary failed to even mention the journey, and she focused her writing on more serious topics after the "race". In 1906, she published the well-received The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn; she had first met Hearn when both were living in New Orleans in the 1880s. Bisland's final book, Three Wise Men of the East (1930), was published posthumously.

Bisland married lawyer Charles Whitman Wetmore in 1891, though she continued to publish books under her maiden name. The couple constructed a noted summer residence called Applegarth (on Long Island's North Shore) in 1892.

Bisland died of pneumonia near Charlottesville, Virginia on January 6, 1929, and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, coincidentally in the same cemetery as Bly, who also died of pneumonia in 1922.