FROM FACT TO FICTION
Getting the scoop
Louisa Treger (below) discusses her novel about the investigative journalist Nellie Bly, who went undercover as an asylum inmate
What drew you to Nellie Bly’s story?
Nellie Bly fascinated me from the start. I wondered what kind of woman could feign madness and commit herself to an asylum for the sake of a newspaper scoop. I began to research her and discovered that she overcame a traumatic childhood and went on to achieve the extraordinary – despite, or even because of, her early life. Bly possessed courage and humanity, and she changed America’s newsrooms and its mental institutions for the better. I wanted to tell the world about her.
How did you research her time in the asylum, in 1887?
I visited the site of the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island, in the East river off Manhattan. All that’s left is an octagonal tower, now a gentrified apartment complex. But I could easily imagine the grim institution on a bleak strip of land, the unreachable lights of Manhattan and Queens just across the water. The New York Public Library and the Library of Congress also opened their collections to me, and I discovered rich and exciting material there.
How close did you stay to the history?
My novel broadly follows the real history, but I took liberties with the characterisations and chronologies, motivated by a desire to dig deeper into Nellie’s emotional life. She wrote about her asylum experiences in the tone of a plucky girl reporter, whom nothing could faze. But I thought that she must have been affected by the atrocities she witnessed, especially given that she had an abusive stepfather and mental health issues during adolescence. Surely the asylum triggered those memories. And I let my imagination run.
Madwoman
by Louisa Treger