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. 

Not many people know about this story, but it’s part of your family history. Did you grow up hearing a lot about it, or did you have to uncover it yourself? 

Until 1993, this story was completely forgotten to history. That year, my mother, Baila, received a letter from a complete stranger who was researching Annie’s story based on a few old newspaper stories he had come across. His research led him to believe that my mother was a descendant of Annie’s.