Isabel. Fancy Cycling.

by MARKS

£1,750 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd · No longer available

MARKS, Isabel. Fancy Cycling. London: Sands and Company. 1901. 8vo. Publisher’s green pictorial cloth cloth with design of trick cyclist against a ground of yellow vertical stripes, lettered in white, spine lettered in gilt; pp. 115, [1 (advertisements)], with half-title; text within ruled border, 75 black-and-white photographic illustrations in the text advertisements for Eadie and Singer bicycles to half-title verso and final leaf; extremities lightly rubbed, spine sunned, top-edge darkened in places; small nick to fore-edge; otherwise a very good copy. Uncommon first edition of the first book devoted to trick cycling, comprising a full guide to the mastery of sixty-three tricks, by the Edwardian trick cyclist and motorcyclist Isabel Marks, featuring numerous illustrations of women and girls performing cycling stunts. Fancy Cycling is a book for ‘any rider possessed of an ordinary amount of nerve, the virtue of determination, and a few spare moments secure from the rude intrusion of unsympathizing spectators’ (p. 5). Each trick is accompanied by a photograph of a straight-faced cyclist performing extraordinary ‘deeds of derring-do’, including several girls and women performing marvellous stunts in long skirts. Among the tricks described by Marks are riding backwards whilst seated on the handlebars, cycling without handlebars altogether, picking up a handkerchief without dismounting, coasting with one’s knees on the saddle, tilting at the ring (with several photographs showi

• Binding: Hardcover

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