How Bicycling Empowered Feminism

When Massachusetts-based author Peter Zheutlin discovered that a long-lost aunt played an integral role in elevating the popularity of bicycling around the end of the 19th century, he decided to tell her story. In so doing, Zheutlin is educating the world about his great-great aunt Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a k a Annie Londonderry, who embarked on a round-the-world bicycling trip with a well-publicized stop in Santa Barbara on May 15, 1895. He published a nonfiction account, Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride in 2007 and this year fictionalized the saga in Spin: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story.

Aside from Londonderry’s amazing life story, Zheutlin’s books highlight how critical bicycling became to liberating women from traditional housebound existence, empowering suffrage, feminism, and personal freedom along the way. He tells us more about the book below.

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