Bicycling for Ladies

Maria E. Ward

Description

Traditional and digital media: Print and online features and reviews with serial options. Targets to focus on media that has covered the author before, such as the New York Times and Bust, and other general, women’s interest, and fitness, such as the Washington Post, Popular Mechanics, Vanity Fair, Woman’s Day, Women’s Health, Mental Floss, and much more.

Trade media outreach: Pitch for coverage by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, ALA Booklist, and Shelf Awareness.

Targeted digital advertising with SEO keywords with focus on reaching audiences interested in bicycling, women’s fitness, and fun, historical etiquette guides.

Support from cultural centers: The executive director of the Alice Austen House and the chief curator of the Historic Richmond Town have each contributed a foreword to the book; both centers provide possibilities for promotional and social media support.

Museum and university bookstore outreach.

Bicycling for Ladies is the trailblazing book that introduced women to bicycling and shocked a Victorian culture on its release in 1896. Today it remains comprehensive and useful, but also celebrates women’s advancement in the sport and offers an inspiring, and amusing, look back.

Maria E. Ward let the social norms and gendered expectations of the nineteenth century eat her dust when she wrote the groundbreaking guide to bicycling for women. In chapters such as Women and Tools, Dress, and How to Make Progress, Ward explains the function of wheels, gears, and spokes, gives instruction on how to safely and efficiently ride, and discusses optimal attire (layers and a stretchy corset, of course).

Ward’s detailed mechanical and physical instruction, paired with helpful images and charts, makes daunting ordeals like hill climbing, navigating traffic, and bike maintenance a breeze. In modern times, when so much is outsourced, automated, and unreliable, Ward’s approach to transportation is refreshing. But while bicycling is rich with health and environmental benefits, male bicyclists still outnumber female riders, most competitive cyclists are male, and women are more likely to report feeling unsafe on a bike. Ward’s text gives women the tools they need to claim their stake of the road. For seasoned cyclists or those just starting out, it is a timeless and relevant directive—ideal for today’s woman who’s ready to take the world by the handlebars.

The photos and instructional images throughout Bicycling for Ladies are the result of a collaboration between Ward and Alice Austen, one of America’s earliest and most prolific professional female photographers. The volume has an elegant new design and is small enough to ride with.

Preface

Foreword by Victoria Munro, Executive Director, Alice Austen House

Foreword by Maxine Friedman, Chief Curator, Historic Richmond Town

Preface by Maria Ward

1. Possibilities

2. What the Bicycle Does

3. On Wheels in General and Bicycles in Particular

4. For Beginners

5. How to Make Progress

6. Helping and Teaching; What to Learn

7. A Few Things to Remember

8. The Art of Wheeling a Bicycle

9. Position and Power

10. Difficulties to Overcome

11. Dress

12. Watch and Cyclometer

13. Women and Tools

14. Tools and How to Use Them

15. Solving a Problem

16. Where to Keep a Bicycle

17. Tires

18. Mechanics of Bicycling

19. Adjustment

20. Exercise

21. Training

22. Breathlessness; The Limit Mechanical

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé du quotidien
• Sport
• Sports fitness
• Cyclisme
• United States
• Cycling
• Recreation
• HISTORY
• Sports
• 19th Century
• Women's Health
• Bicycles
• Cucling

Informations

• Publié par: Apollo Publishers
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948062534
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Classic 1896 Guide to Skills,
Exercise, Mechanics, and Dress

MARIA E. WARD
with Photographic Support by ALICE AUSTEN




Bicycling for Ladies: The Classic 1896 Guide to Skills, Exercise, Mechanics, and Dress
Bicycling for Ladies was originally published in 1896 and titled The Common Sense of Bicycling, Bicycling for Ladies: With Hints as to the Art of Wheeling–Advice to Beginners–Dress–Care of the Bicycle–Mechanics–Training–Exercise, etc. etc.New design and text copyright © 2021 by Apollo Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be sent by email to Apollo Publishers at [e-mail].
Apollo Publishers books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Special editions may be made available upon request. For details, contact Apollo Publishers at [e-mail].
Visit our website at www.apollopublishers.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935830.
Published in compliance with California's Proposition 65.
Print ISBN: 978-1-948062-52-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-948062-53-4
Printed in the United States of America.




Contents

Preface
Foreword by Victoria Munro, Executive Director, Alice Austen House
Foreword by Maxine Friedman, Chief Curator, Historic Richmond Town
Preface byMaria Ward
Possibilities
What the Bicycle Does
On Wheels in General and Bicycles in Particular
For Beginners
How to Make Progress
Helping and Teaching; What to Learn
A Few Things to Remember
The Art of Wheeling a Bicycle
Position and Power
Difficulties to Overcome
Dress
Watch and Cyclometer
Women and Tools
Tools and How to Use Them
Solving a Problem
Where to Keep a Bicycle
Tires
Mechanics of Bicycling
Adjustment
Exercise
Training
Breathlessness; The Limit Mechanical
About Maria E. Ward


List of Illustrations

Original title page showing a delightful subtitle, etc., etc.
Front cover of original edition
Back cover of original edition
Correct position—leaning with the wheel.
Proper way to stand a bicycle.
Carrying the bicycle.
Picking up a bicycle.
Leading a bicycle about.
Prepairing to dismount.
Dismounting.
Correct pedaling.
Following pedal.
Lifting.
Back pedaling.
Back pedaling—showing distribution of weight.
Hill climbing—pushing crank over.
Coasting.
Wheeling one foot over.
Wheeling from the peg—showing distribution of weight.
Mounting—preparatory position.
Correct mounting position.
Mounting—second position.
Dismounting over the wheel.
Mounting over the wheel from peg.
Starting a nut.
Adjusting a wrench.
Applying power.
Screwing up.
Unscrewing.
Preparing to turn the bicycle over.
Turning the bicycle over.
The bicycle turned over.
Straightening the handle-bars.



Preface

O riginally published in 1896, Maria (“Violet”) Ward’s spectacular volume Bicycling for Ladies shocked and delighted a Victorian culture and gave women the tools they needed to master the art of bicycling, and thus have a road to autonomy. Today it remains comprehensive in explaining the basic components of the bicycle and how to ride one, as well as a delightful look back. This new edition, published more than a century after the first, maintains the original text and illustrations produced from photographs by the acclaimed photographer Alice Austen, as well as insightful and contextualizing forewords by Victoria Munro, executive director of the Alice Austen House, and Maxine Friedman, chief curator of Historic Richmond Town in Staten Island, New York. Both the Alice Austen House and Historic Richmond Town own photographs and memorabilia related to Violet Ward and her family, Alice Austen, and Daisy Elliott.


Foreword by Victoria Munro, Executive Director, Alice Austen House

M aria E. Ward, known as Violet, and her circle of women friends who contributed to Bicycling for Ladies were in a league all of their own. They were trailblazers, breaking away from the constraints of their Victorian environment to forge independent lives that broke boundaries of acceptable female behavior and social rules.
The cover of the first edition of Bicycling for Ladies , published in 1896, is a rich blue with golden highlights depicting a woman at its center, wearing bloomers, kicking her feet forward with her hat flying off as she revels in cycling alone down a country road. This representation of independence and athleticism suggested the possibilities of new freedoms and exciting adventures for women in the Victorian era.
Ward celebrated this newfound independence in her writings, which moved beyond instruction of proper riding form to explore the mechanics of the bicycle and understanding the tools used to maintain and fix them. Sharing Ward’s enthusiasm for new technologies was her close friend Alice Austen. Austen was a skillful photographer, and on a makeshift set on the lawn of her Staten Island home, she took the photos used to richly illustrate Ward’s book. The model, Daisy Elliott, who shared Ward’s and Austen’s enthusiasm for sports, was a gymnast and a manager of a sports facility for women in Manhattan. She was also Austen’s lover.
There have been various interpretations of Bicycling for Ladies , but few explore the importance of its illustrations and the social relationships of the women who collaborated to create this landmark book. Ward and her friends strived to be independent women who rejected traditional Victorian women’s roles of marriage and motherhood. With her camera, Austen documented the connection between women’s physical mobility and their personal freedom. Daisy Elliott is depicted here in strong athletic poses, as she is in several of Austen’s other photography collections.
Austen was introduced to photography at age ten in 1876. A second-floor closet of her home on the shoreline of the New York Narrows Harbor served as her darkroom. In this home studio, which was also one of her photographic muses, she produced more than seven thousand photographs of a rapidly changing New York City, making significant contributions to photographic history by documenting Victorian women’s social activities, New York’s immigrant populations, and the natural and architectural world of her and her friends’ travels.
One of America’s first female photographers to work outside of the studio, Austen often transported up to fifty pounds of photographic equipment on her bicycle to capture her world. In Austen’s letter archives there are several correspondences between Elliott and Ward and Austen from around the time of the Bicycling for Ladies publication, which reveal their adventurous travels and the intimate nature of their relationships. In an 1891 letter to Austen sent during her travels, Ward writes:
I only wish you were along, what fun we would have together. My camera is here and I hope to take back some work with me. Undeveloped of course. Did you succeed in securing some snow plates this year? What opportunities you must have had with this season of cold.
Elliott would write to Austen in 1897:
You know that I love you darling; there are many things I think of that I would like to do for you, yet, there is so little I really can. Whenever there is anything I could do, and don’t, please let me know; because there is nothing [that] gives me more true pleasure than doing for one I love as I do you.
These women led incredibly full, liberated, nontraditional lives that could be the subject of several volumes of books. Understanding this makes the reading of this book all the more interesting and pleasurable. Bicycling for Ladies can truly be viewed as an early marker of the women’s liberation movement and an important piece of lesbian history.


Foreword by Maxine Friedman, Chief Curator, Historic Richmond Town

B icycling for Ladies : Staten Island and the Bicycling Craze of the 1890s
A bright, sunny morning, fresh and cool; good roads and a dry atmosphere; a beautiful country before you, all your own to see and enjoy; a properly adjusted wheel awaiting you, — what more delightful than to mount and speed away, the whirr of the wheels, the soft grit of the tire, an occasional chain-clank the only sounds added to the chorus of the morning, as, the pace attained, the road stretches away before you!
So wrote Maria E. Ward in the first chapter of her book Bicycling for Ladies , published in 1896. The Staten Island native, known to her friends and family as Violet, was a vocal proponent of bicycling as an ideal outdoor sport for women, and her book came on the market precisely at the peak of bicycling’s greatest popularity in the United States.
Teaching women how to ride a bicycle might seem an unusual topic to today’s readers, but bicycling as a widely popular and affordable activity was barely ten years old in 1896. Early versions of the bicycle included the heavy “boneshaker” of the 1860s and the high wheelers of the 1870s and 1880s, but none of the early versions found mass acceptance, and most of those who did use them were men.
Bicycling changed dramatically in 1887 with the introduction of the “safety” bicycle to the United States. Featuring two wheels of equal size, and a chain drive that made riding more efficient, the new bicycle found quick acceptance among both men and women. The addition of pneumatic tires in 1889 gave a smoother ride, and assembly-line production lowered the cost. By the