ABSTRACT
The earliest fiction on the bicycle is likely to be French and two centuries old. Poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists and journalists have been attracted to it because of its modernity, the sense of liberation from social and moral constraints, the particular relation to space and time that it instils, the independent or eccentric spirit it seems to symbolise, and the psycho-physical feelings it provokes in the rider. Appropriately enough for an invention of the early nineteenth century, this is close to a Romantic aesthetic. A distinctive factor in the widespread literary interest in the bicycle in France has been the popularity of cycle racing, particularly the Tour de France. The main authors discussed in this chapter are Banville, Barthes, Carrier, Gracq, Jarry, Leblanc, Lesclide, Perret, Perrodil, Proust, Riol, Romains and Scribe.
