Around the World on Two Wheels - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

pzheutlin · 11-29-2007, 03:38 PM

Hello from Boston...thought members of this community would be interested in an outstanding new book (I am the unbiased author

) about the first international female sports star who earned her celebrity by cycling around the world in 1894-5, pioneering sports-related marketing for women in the process.

The book, published in November 2007 by Citadel Press in New York, is called "Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extrordinary Ride."

I am attaching here a brief release about the book, which is available from Amazon.com, in stores and from other online retailers. You can learn more about this remarkable woman at [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. (Annie was my great-grandaunt.)

I am an avid cyclist and fell in love with this story when I first learned about in just four years ago, and think anyone who has experienced the world while balanced on two wheels will enjoy it, as well.

New Book Tells the Astonishing Story of the Young Mother from Boston who Circled the World by Bicycle in 1894-5

It was, declared the New York World on October 20, 1895, “the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman” -- an audacious, solo, ‘round the world race against time on a bicycle – and the woman who made it was a working class Jewish mother from Boston, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky. Though she became a global sensation in the mid-1890s, and was a singularly colorful and eccentric woman, her story had been lost to history for more than a century.

Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride (Citadel Press, 2007), is the remarkable story of the woman who transformed herself into an international celebrity as the globe trotting cyclist, Mlle. Annie Londonderry, a pseudonym she took from her first corporate sponsor, the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire.

The journey, set against the backdrop of the women’s movement, the bicycle craze and an intense periods of globalization brought on by advances in communications and transportation technology, illuminates many vital aspects of late 19th century life.

Miss Londonderry was reportedly set in motion by a novel, high-stakes wager that required Annie not only to circle the earth by bicycle in 15 months, but to earn $5,000 en route, as well. This was no mere test of a woman’s physical endurance and mental fortitude; it was a test of a woman’s ability to fend for herself in the world.

Traveling with only a change of clothes and a pearl-handled revolver, Annie earned her way, in part, by turning her bicycle and her body into a mobile billboard, carrying advertising banners and ribbons through the streets of cities around the world. Thus adorned, and riding a men’s bicycle and a man’s riding suit, Annie turned every Victorian expectation of female propriety on its ear. She was outlandish, outrageous, radical and charismatic and she set out to do what no woman had done before.