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

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Alternative Modernity of the Bicycle in British and French Literature, 1880-1920 is written by Una Brogan and published by Edinburgh University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1474488633 (ISBN 10) and 9781474488631 (ISBN 13).

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.