orig. Elizabeth Cochrane
born May 5, 1867?, Cochran's Mills, Pa., U.S.
died Jan. 27, 1922, New York, N.Y.
U.S. newspaper writer.
Bly started writing for The Pittsburgh Dispatch at age 18, producing feature articles on such subjects as divorce and slum life. After joining the New York World , she feigned insanity to get into an asylum and wrote an exposé that brought about needed reforms. Beginning in 1889, in an attempt to beat the fictional record in Jules Verne 's Around the World in Eighty Days , she circled the globe in about 72 days, 6 hours. The much-publicized trip made her byname a celebrated synonym for a female star reporter.