Nellie Bly’s Last Column

Weeks before her death, Nellie Bly continues to confound expectations

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Nellie Bly’s tragic death of pneumonia. I’ve been watching with delight as people pen articles, listicles, and tributes to this amazing woman. She deserves all of it, and more.

Bly has made up a huge piece of my last five years. I’ve written three works of fiction about the trailblazing feminist journalist. I’ve collected hundreds of her articles, and published dozens of them, both online and in book form. And I discovered eleven novels she wrote that were thought lost to posterity.

And yet she’s constantly upending my expectations of her.

Today’s think-pieces understandably focus on her heyday, the early years at the New York World, kicking off with her Mad-House story and ending with her race around the world.

Deciding to go the other direction, I went through my files to find her final piece of journalism. The one I found is from an advice column she was writing in December 1921. It reads very much like the early 20th-century version of AITA.

In this piece, a young man asks if he is wrong to be offended that his feminine friend insisted on paying her own way on a drive in his car.

I fully expected Bly to side with the young lady. But Bly, as always, had other ideas.