Velocipedomania

"Engaging, well-researched, and expertly translated, Velocipedomania gives insight into the craze this two-wheeled machine inspired in the late 1860s and, more generally, into the rich popular culture of the period."

— Anne O'Neil-Henry, author of Mastering the Marketplace: Popular Literature in Nineteenth-Century France

"In this immensely enjoyable and highly original volume brimming with illustrations, helpful notes, short texts, and links to online musical recordings, Cropper and Whidden study responses to the development of this prototype vélo, thus bringing much-deserved attention to the optimistic Zeitgeist of a period now haunted by the specter of the Paris Commune."

— Nineteenth Century French Studies

"Careening across the stage, lifted into song, championed in story—velocipedes take France by storm in 1869-70. The machine of speed touches on gender, politics, class, and more. Never has cultural history been more informative or more fun than in the rollicking translations and commentary of Velocipedomania."

— Scott Carpenter, author of Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-Century France

"This book is a fabulous exploration of the social and cultural importance of the velocipede—a short-lived but consequential predecessor to the modern bicycle—in France during the late 1860s."

— Robert Lewis, author of The Stadium Century: Sport, Spectatorship and Mass Society in Modern France

"In this engaging and informative book, Corry Cropper and Seth Whidden explore how, in late 1860s France, the forerunner of the bicycle came to be seen as a marker of modernity, freedom and even of national identity . . . A large number of contemporary cartoons and illustrations add to the rich source material—and to the reader's enjoyment."— French History

"In Velocipedomania, Cropper and Whidden bring to light an unexamined page of French cultural history—France's obsession and cultural identification with the bicycle that began in the 1860s and that persists to this day. This lively compilation of texts about the velocipede, the iconic two-wheel wood and iron vehicle, will delight readers."

— Masha Belenky, author of Engine of Modernity: The Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris