Abstract
The Victorian fin de siècle was imprinted by one particular mode of transport: the bicycle, which had its boom in 1895–7. Different kinds of cycles had existed before the introduction of the modern ‘safety’ bicycle in 1884, but neither the high-wheeler (commonly called the ‘penny-farthing’) with its large front wheel nor the more expensive tricycle was widely adopted — these were reserved for men and women of a certain wealth. It was John Kemp Stanley’s low-wheel Rover safety design of 1884, with a chain drive to the rear wheel and a year later featuring a diamond frame, that made the bicycle available to almost everyone. Coupled with John Dunlop’s pneumatic tyres, which were added in 1887, the safety bicycle became standard.1 Easier and safer to ride than earlier models, the bicycle now, very importantly, was also affordable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Roderick Watson and Martin Gray, The Penguin Book of the Bicycle (London: Penguin, 1978), 120–1;
James McGurn, On Your Bicycle: An Illustrated History of Cycling (London: John Murray, 1987), 86–7;
David Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2004), 235–50.
David Rubinstein, ‘Cycling in the 1890s’, Victorian Studies 21.1 (Autumn 1977): 47–71, 49–50.
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 317.
Lisa Larrabee, ‘Women and Cycling: The Early Years’, in Frances E. Willard. How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman, ed. Edith Mayo (Sunnyvale: Fair Oaks Publishing, 1991), 81–97, 90;
Robert A. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle: Its Early Life and Times in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 76.
Frances E. Willard, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride a Bicycle with Some Reflections by the Way (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1895), 38.
Ella Hepworth Dixon, ‘Why Women are Ceasing to Marry’, 1899, in The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c. 1880–1900, ed. Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83–8, 86.
Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (London; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 150.
Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis. ‘Introduction’, The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 1–38, 24.
Chris Willis, ‘“Heaven defend me from political or highly-educated women!”: Packaging the New Woman for Mass Consumption’, in The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, ed. Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 53–65, 53.
Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’, The Strand Magazine 27.157 (Jan 1904): 2–14, 3.
For a more extensive discussion of Kennard’s use of transport and technology see Sarah Wintle, ‘Horses, Bikes and Automobiles: New Woman on the Move’, in The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, ed. Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 66–78.
Mary E. Kennard, The Golf Lunatic and His Cycling Wife (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1902), 63.
Grant Allen [Olive Pratt Rayner, pseud.], The Type-Writer Girl (London: C. A. Pearson, 1897), 50.
Grant Allen, Miss Cayley’s Adventures, ill. by Gordon Browne (London: Grant Richards, 1899), 5.
Kathleen E. McCrone, Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 1870–1914 (New York; London: Routledge, 1988), 184.
George Gissing, ‘A Daughter of the Lodge’, 1901, in Women Who Did: Stories by Men and Women 1890–1914, ed. Angelique Richardson (London: Penguin, 2002. 264–75), 269.
Patricia Stubbs, Women and Fiction: Feminism and the Novel 1880–1920 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979), 179.
H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica, 1909 (London: Everyman/J. M. Dent, 1993), 22.
H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday Adventure, ill. by J. Ayton Symington (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1896), 10.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Lena Wånggren
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wånggren, L. (2015). The ‘Freedom Machine’. In: Gavin, A.E., Humphries, A.F. (eds) Transport in British Fiction. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137499042_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137499042_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-69838-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49904-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)