Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age

These new essays tell the stories of daring reporters, male and female, sent out by their publishers not to capture the news but to make the news—indeed to achieve star billing—and to capitalize on the Gilded Age public's craze for real-life adventures into the exotic and unknown. They examine the adventure journalism genre through the work of iconic writers such as Mark Twain and Nellie Bly, as well as lesser-known journalistic masters such as Thomas Knox and Eliza Scidmore, who took to the rivers and oceans, mineshafts and mountains, rails and trails of the late nineteenth century, shaping Americans' perceptions of the world and of themselves.

“Having reported on modern-day adventurers and my own explorations from ninety countries, to both Poles, and across the planet's one giant ocean, I wish I'd had a copy of Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age in my backpack during my own travels; it would have fattened my experiences, both here at home and to the most remote corners of the globe. Bravo!!” —Jon Bowermaster, 6-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, author of Crossing Antarctica, Descending the Dragon: My Journey Down the Coast of Vietnam“Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age is a thoroughly researched examination of journalistic exploits we haven't seen in decades. It makes me long for the days where reporters could take their readers on wild treks to places beyond their imagination and speaks to the types of stories we all want to tell and the influence we all want to have. This book will provide context and intrigue for the reporters of today and the future.” —Paula Reed Ward, a member of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning team for breaking news, author of Death by Cyanide: The Murder of Dr. Autumn Klein“Katrina Quinn, Mary Cronin, Lee Jolliffe and the chapter authors of Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age take a fresh new look at the extraordinary influence of the travel writers of the nineteenth century, who made the American frontier accessible and provided a window into the most distant and remote places in the world. These journalists made travel, itself, exciting and a visit to even the most inhospitable places, a great 'adventure.' The book editors and chapter authors are all fine writers themselves and the remarkable characters who were the adventure journalists of the Gilded Age come alive in the pages of this book.” —David B. Sachsman, director of the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression

Katrina J. Quinn is a professor of communication at Slippery Rock University. Named a Hazel Dicken-Garcia Distinguished Scholar of Journalism History in 2019, she has published on topics such as nineteenth-century political reporting, sensationalism, literary journalism, narrative, and personal accounts of the American frontier.Mary M. Cronin is a professor at New Mexico State University and a former newspaper reporter, editor and freelance writer.Lee Jolliffe is a professor of journalism at Drake University, where she teaches media design and honors courses on the media. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a freelance writer and as supervisor of the Writing and Editing Section at Battelle Institute on projects for NASA, DOE, DoD, NSF, NIH, and the EPA.