Tour de France countdown: 6

In honour of the coming of the Tour de France to Cambridge on 7th July, the Special Collections blog will feature a daily image from one of the Library’s early books on cycling in the week leading up to the big day.  Many carry eye-catching illustrated covers, showing early bicycles and pioneering lady cyclists, and are an important resource for the study of early cycling in Britain.  Most came to the Library in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under the Copyright Act, and live in the Tower.  We hope you enjoy the display!

Charles Spencer: The bicycle: its use and action (London: [?1870]). This volume appears to be the earliest English work on the bicycle in the Library’s collection.
“…some will take to it more quickly than others, and the duration of the lesson must depend on the learner himself and the amount of mechanical aptitude which he may be gifted with.” (pp. 25-27)
(Shelfmark: 1870.6.615)