“Eva The Adventuress” — A Lost Novel Of Nellie Bly

From 1890 to 1895, pioneering journalist Nellie Bly wrote eleven serial novels for a weekly publication. From that time to this, they have all been thought lost forever — until the announcement of their discovery on January 25, 2021.

The first of these lost novels is Eva the Adventuress, a gripping “ripped-from-the-headlines” tale of a red-headed vixen wronged by everyone and eager for revenge. With her signature move of stabbing men in the chest but failing to kill them, Eva Scarlett is clearly based on the real-life Eva Hamilton, whose scandalous trial filled breathless headlines in the fall of 1889.

New York state assemblyman Robert Ray Hamilton — great-grandson of founding father Alexander Hamilton — had been seeing Miss Eva Steele for two years when, in 1888, she told him she was expecting. When, after months in seclusion, she introduced him to his daughter, Hamilton did the honorable thing and married Eva. Leaving public life, the couple journeyed to California.

Eight months later Eva was charged with attempted murder of the baby’s nurse.

The story tumbled out. Eva Steele was really an “adventuress” named Eva Mann — aka Eva Parsons, aka Eva Brill. Already married to one Joshua Mann, she’d carried on with both men for years before convincing Robert Ray Hamilton that she was…