Wheels of Chance

A Bicycling Idyll

,

• Publisher: The Floating Press
• Year: 2009
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9781775410591
• Topic: Literature
• Index: Literature

The comical Wheels of Chance was written in 1896 at the height of the golden age of the bicycle, when practical and affordable bicycles led to profound social shifts in England. Suddenly people of modest means could travel greater distances for work or even for pleasure, without the limitations of rail schedules, weakening England's rigid class structure and strengthening the movement towards the liberation of women. In the novel, the poorly-paid draper's assistant Mr. Hoopdriver sets out on a cycling holiday, and awkwardly encounters a pretty young woman cycling alone and wearing bloomers, an shocking image in its time and one that summed up the new freedom, liberation and exhilaration of the bicycle.

Table of contents

• THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
• Contents
• The Principal Character in the Story
• The Riding Forth of Mr. Hoopdriver
• The Shameful Episode of the Young Lady in Grey
• On the Road to Ripley
• How Mr. Hoopdriver was Haunted
• The Imaginings of Mr. Hoopdriver's Heart
• Omissions
• The Dreams of Mr. Hoopdriver
• How Mr. Hoopdriver Went to Haslemere
• How Mr. Hoopdriver Reached Midhurst
• An Interlude
• Of the Artificial in Man, and of the Zeitgeist
• The Encounter at Midhurst
• The Pursuit
• At Bognor
• The Moonlight Ride
• The Surbiton Interlude
• The Awakening of Mr. Hoopdriver
• The Departure from Chichester
• The Unexpected Anecdote of the Lion
• The Rescue Expedition
• Mr. Hoopdriver, Knight Errant
• The Abasement of Mr. Hoopdriver
• In the New Forest
• At the Rufus Stone
• The Envoy