Around the World on Two Wheels

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.