Two women who died of pneumonia in the 1920s lie buried in the same Bronx cemetery, once the two most famous women on the planet. One was Nellie Bly; the other, Elizabeth Bisland, is the subject of this deep dive, a formidable literary talent who wanted nothing to do with the 1889 media stunt that made her globally famous.

Born on a Louisiana plantation at the onset of the Civil War, Bisland built a serious literary career in New Orleans and New York before a publisher drafted her into a race around the world against Nellie Bly. We trace the murky final stretch that cost her the win and the independent literary life she built afterward, on her own terms.

• How she published under the ambiguous pen name B.L.R. Dane to bypass bias
• The proxy war between stunt journalism and traditional literature
• The bribed steamer, th ...