The Alternative Modernity of the Bicycle in British and French Literature, 1880 1920

Examines the bicycle as a literary device and a cultural phenomenon at the turn of the century in Britain and France.

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This book engages with the long-overlooked bicycle as a crucial literary and cultural object. In a selection of turn-of-the-century fiction, travel writing and non-fiction, cycling is revealed to be a favoured literary device, allowing writers to structure their narratives in new ways or depict a fresh sensory and aesthetic experience. Moreover, this study reveals that from its earliest days, the bicycle played a compelling counter-cultural role, proposing an alternative modernity that directly challenged bourgeois, patriarchal, capitalist society. From blurring gender and class divisions, to offering a more empowering interaction with the machine and allowing an embodied and social experience of space, the bicycle pointed a human-powered route to progress amidst increasingly mechanised visions of the future.