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The Bicycle, Pryor Dodge (1996)
Flammarion, 2-08013-650-X 225 pp £20
A lavishly illustrated history of bicycles
 
This is a truly sumptuous book, based on the author’s extraordinary
collection of bicycles and cycle-related ephemera. There are hundreds
of pictures – from the early velocipedes and Draisnes, to the promotional
material to period shots of them in use. Every page is illustrated, mostly
in colour and entire double page spreads are devoted to almost pornographic
depictions of, among other things, pedals from the 1860s.
Accompanying the photographers are a scholarly account of cycling from
earliest times, including the social developments that accompanied the
first cycling boom, cycling organisations and the industrial backstory
to the Victorian and Edwardian bike craze.
Dodge’s collection is fabulous, and this, luscious book does it
proud. If I have one beef it is that it makes a claim to bring things
up to the present day, with a brief mention of mountain bikes, human powered
vehicles and other recent innovations. In truth, the period up to about
1920 is lavishly covered. Thereafter, the coverage is so slight as to
have been better left out. Hopefully, some collector of cycle-related
matter will do a job on the second half of the twentieth century will
produce a volume that is the equal of this.
PS August 08
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