In 1885, the Pittsburgh Dispatch ran an op-ed under the byline “The Quiet Observer” entitled “What Girls Are Good For.” In the view of Erasmus Wilson (owner of the pseudonym), the short answer was essentially staying home and making babies, where they could “play the part of angel.”
“I can pinpoint the exact moment. I was reading an article in April of 2016 in the Atlantic that was about how there were more female action stars in Hollywood a hundred years ago than there are today. And that fascinated me, and it’s right up my alley,” says Blixt. “So I started looking at the movies they were listing and you know, it’s all the Perils of Pauline, it’s all the silent films of the intrepid young woman discovering some dastardly deed or whatever. And looking at movie after movie, each one said ‘based loosely on the life of Nellie Bly.’”
After spending “weeks and weeks” scanning through the Bly collection online (and spending New Year’s of 2020 in Toronto transcribing sections from the microfilm that weren’t legible), Blixt had a bundle of Bly books. He released ten of the previously unpublished works late last month, just in time for the anniversaries of the publication of her first story (January 25) and of her death at age 57 (January 27).
Though Bly has appeared in several incarnations in pop culture (including two episodes of Drunk History), Blixt found it difficult to get agents and publishers interested in his novels about Bly. “It’s one of those things where I was told that there was no hook, no one would be interested. And I kid you not, one agent suggested to me that I make her a vampire or a detective or even a man. ‘There’s no hook.’ I was told this again and again, nobody would be interested in a straight story of her life. And I’m like, ‘You’re kidding me. You’ve got to be kidding me.’”
But in Blixt, she’s found a fan and ally. v
