Screenwriter and producer Amanda Costa has purchased the book rights to Peter Zheutlin’s Around the World on Two Wheels for adaptation for the big screen. The book recently captured the public’s eye and made Annie the darling of the international cycling community.
Zheutlin’s historical tale, set in 1894, recounts the journey of the first woman to bicycle around the world, Annie Londonderry Kopchovsky. Annie Londonderry, Zheutlin’s great-great aunt, made her mark on women’s history when she began her journey armed with only a revolver, a change of underwear and a dream of freedom.
The complexity of Annie, a young mother and wife of an orthodox Jew with nothing in her background to suggest she would undertake such a perilous trip, attracted Ms. Costa to the project. She was kinda crazy, but in a good way. If she was alive today, I think she would have probably pursued a career before having children but as was with most women of her time, she was married at sixteen and had her firstchild a year later.
Annie Londonderry was a shining example of Susan B. Anthony’s statement about the bicycle and its role in the feminist movement, ”Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Website for book: http://annielondonderry.com/
Contact: Amanda Lin Costa, amanda@theloneolive.com
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dick Mansfield, Amanda Lin Costa. Amanda Lin Costa said: BIg thank you to Laurel-Lea & @WomensCyclingCa for mention of me & Annie Londonderry:: http://bit.ly/cS3Kc5 [...]