Women and Bicycles

During the height of the bicycling craze, the 1890s, there was much debate about whether women ought to be allowed to ride the bicycle. Arguments against women riding bicycles pointed to the bicycle as a potential corrupter of innocence.

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
—Susan B. Anthony in The New York World, February 2, 1896 (Page 42, Column 3)

To find materials related to women and the bicycle use the subject headings below to browse for materials in the Library of Congress Online Catalog

Julia Obear, Messenger Girl at the National Women's Party Headquarters. 1922. National Photo Company Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author. Shall Women Ride the Bicycle? Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

Charles Dana Gibson, artist. Scribners for June. 1895. Posters: Artist Posters. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Selected Print Materials

The following materials link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are provided when available.

Around the World on Two Wheels by Peter Zheutlin
Call Number: GV1044 .Z47 2007
ISBN: 9780806531717
Published/Created: 2008-10-01
Until 1894, there were no female sport stars, no product endorsement deals, and certainly no young mothers with the chutzpah to circle the globe on a bicycle. Annie Londonderry changed all of that. When Annie left Boston in June of that year, she was a brash young lady with a forty-two-pound bicycle, a revolver, a change of underwear, and a dream of freedom. She was also a feisty immigrant mother of three who had become the center of what one newspaper called "one of the most novel wagers ever made": a high-stakes bet between two wealthy merchants that a woman could not ride around the world on a bicycle.
Wheel Within a Wheel by Frances E. Willard
Call Number: GV1057 .W73
ISBN: 1557094497
Published/Created: 1997-09-01
Published originally in 1895, this classic by Frances Willard, the founder of the WCTU and well-known suffragette, gives insight into both the profound impact of the bicycle at the turn of the century and the new freedom it gave to women in America.
Algerian memories; a bicycle tour over the Atlas to the Sahara, by Workman, Fanny Bullock, 1859-1925.
Call Number: DT279 .W92
Published/Created: 1895
Claiming the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America by Sarah Hallenbeck
Call Number: GV1057 .H35 2016
ISBN: 9780809334445
Published/Created: 2015-12-21
Tracing the role of nineteenthcentury women and rhetoric in transforming the bicycle Although the impact of the bicycle craze of the late nineteenth century on women's lives has been well documented, rarely have writers considered the role of women's rhetorical agency in the transformation of bicycle culture and the bicycle itself. In Claiming the Bicycle, Sarah Hallenbeck argues that through their collective rhetorical activities, women who were widely dispersed in space, genre, and intention negotiated proper uses for the bicycle, destabilizing cultural assumptions about femininity and gender difference.
Women on the Move by Roger Gilles
Call Number: GV1049 .G58 2018
ISBN: 9781496204172
Published/Created: 2018-10-01
The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze, and consumers, including women, were buying bicycles in large numbers. Despite critics who tried to discourage women from trying this new sport, women took to the bike in huge numbers, and mastery of the bicycle became a metaphor for women's mastery over their lives. Spurred by the emergence of the "safety" bicycle and the ensuing cultural craze, women's professional bicycle racing thrived in the United States from 1895 to 1902.

Also try using some vernacular or vocabulary specific to the time period and region.

Wheelwoman
Lady/woman Cyclist
Bloomerite or "new woman"
Radfahrer (German for cyclist)

Another research strategy is to find known female cyclists and proponents of the bicycle for women. Some examples:

Annie Londonderry (born Annie Kopchovsky)
Frances Willard. Avid cyclist, educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. National president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union 1879-1898.

Digital Collections and Databases

These following digital collections are a great place to look for materials for researching women and bicycles.

Chronicling America
You can freely search this collection of digitized newspapers anywhere with an internet connection.
National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
The collection consists of a variety of materials including newspapers, books, pamphlets, memorials, scrapbooks, and proceedings from the meetings of various women's organizations that document the suffrage fight.

The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.

Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs External This link opens in a new window
A number of women's periodicals are accessible via this database.
Everyday Life & Women in America: c.1800-1920 External This link opens in a new window
Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 showcases unique primary source material for the study of American social, cultural, and popular history in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Everyday Life collection features texts of rare books, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsides. These documents cover a variety of themes including popular culture, social history, family life, education, race, class, and employment. There is also an emphasis on advice literature, and on both women and men’s issues.

Bicycles and Cycling History: A Resource Guide

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