Chasing the tale of a pioneering cyclist

She was an unknown Boston housewife who vaulted to international prominence overnight, scandalously casting off social conventions in search of fame, adventure, and freedom. She was half Billie Jean King, a trailblazing athlete who struck a blow for women's rights on a one-gear brakeless bike, and half P.T. Barnum, a savvy self-promoter who peddled sensational tales as she pedaled across the globe.

Meet Annie Cohen Kopchovsky , who in 1894 left her husband and three young children with a dream of becoming the first woman to ride a bicycle around the world. She was just 23 and had never ridden a bike in her life, but in a whirlwind 15-month odyssey traded in her Victorian corset and hoop skirt for bloomers and transformed into Annie Londonderry , international cycling star.

But not long after returning from her adventure, which earned intense media coverage and made Londonderry a celebrated symbol of the women's movement, she resumed a life of obscurity. Even her death notice in 1947 failed to note her storied journey. Now, a Needham writer and descendant of Londonderry is working with two Washington, D.C., filmmakers to rescue her legacy from history's dustbin. Peter Zheutlin , a freelance writer and Londonderry's great-grandnephew, researched her life for a book set for publication next year by Citadel Press, and is a consultant for a planned documentary on her exploits.

To raise money for the movie, Zheutlin and filmmakers Gillian Klempner and Meghan Shea are taking a cue from Londonderry -- a keen marketer with a decidedly modern sense of celebrity culture who financed her trip by plastering her bike and herself with advertising, even adopting the name of a major sponsor, a New Hampshire water company. Starting Saturday, they are re-creating the first leg of her ride -- Beacon Hill to Manhattan along Route 1 -- right down to the bloomers (except for Zheutlin, that is). They hope the publicity draws sponsors for their documentary, tentatively called ``The New Woman: Annie `Londonderry' Kopchovsky."

The filmmakers learned about Londonderry through an article Zheutlin wrote last year for Bicycling magazine, and were inspired by her independence, audacity, and knack for positioning herself as an avatar of movements in which she was not personally invested.

``It's a quintessentially American story that reflects many of the undercurrents of the time," said Klempner , 25. ``It was easy to mistake her for a suffragette, but her only cause was herself. She was able to happen upon her own version of the American dream."

Zheutlin first heard about his famous relative in 1993, when an amateur historian in Texas contacted his mother in an unsuccessful search for information about Londonderry. But it wasn't until a decade later that he began his own pursuit of the story. Virtually nothing had been written about her since the trip, so he crisscrossed the country to piece her story together through newspaper accounts, interviews, memorabilia, and letters. As he forged a kinship with his forebear, he chased her legacy with renewed vigor.

``She was like my muse," he said.

His research and writing also became a personal mission as he recovered from thyroid cancer. Zheutlin began cycling in earnest to regain his strength, and found inspiration in Londonderry's defiant optimism. Just as she had, he found freedom and transcendence on the roads, and thoughts of her sustained him on long rides, he said.

Londonderry, a master storyteller and charismatic presence who could ``command a room and sell you the Brooklyn Bridge," ceaselessly blurred fact and fiction, and Zheutlin struggled to reconcile the inconsistencies. But in the end, he decided that the embellishments were an expression of her deep desire to escape ordinary life in search of drama and adventure.

For example, her trip was ostensibly spurred by a high-stakes wager between two wealthy Boston businessmen that no woman could ride around the world in 15 months. But Zheutlin believes she may have concocted the whole bet as a convenient narrative for her trip and to grab media attention.

In that vein, he also sees her life more as a triumph of self-mythologizing than feminist statement.

``She transformed herself from a working-class Jewish mother into a global celebrity," he said. ``That was her real achievement."

Klempner and Shea are not avid cyclists, but they believe that's fitting, since Londonderry herself saw cycling only as a means to an end. In many ways, they said, her voyage reflected -- and capitalized upon -- key social trends of her day: the burgeoning women's liberation movement, a cycling craze that stood as one of its central symbols, and breakthroughs in communication and transportation, such as the steamship and telegraph. Her gift for self-promotion and spinning tall tales dovetailed with the sensationalist journalism of the time.

But it also was a personal triumph, an act of defiant independence, ingenuity, and sheer chutzpah, her biographers say.

``She was basically a lovable rogue out to make herself famous," said Zheutlin, who has written articles for The Boston Globe as a freelancer. At the same time, he said, she demanded the right to ``live the life she wanted to live."

Shea, a 24-year-old Walpole native, said she was drawn to the ``spirit and self-reliance" Londonderry showed in defying the restrictions that society placed on women, and her daring in leaving everything behind to see the world.

Londonderry rode from New York to Chicago, then doubled back and took a steamship to France, where her journey made headlines and large crowds lined the streets to meet her. From there, she hopped a liner through the Mediterranean Sea and across the Indian Ocean, stopping to tour ports on her bike. Since she made it from Marseilles to Japan in six weeks, Zheutlin admits that her claim of riding around the world was spurious at best.

Then again, Londonderry never let the truth get in the way of a good story. According to newspaper accounts, she regaled audiences with tales of hunting tigers in India, being taken prisoner in China during the Sino-Japanese War, and being mistaken for an evil spirit by tribesmen in remote Asia.

She visited Egypt, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, and China before sailing to San Francisco in March 1895. She then reported cycling across the country to Chicago, but Zheutlin believes she may have hopped aboard a train here and there.

Her entire trip received breathless media coverage, a testament to its groundbreaking significance and her own guile and charisma.

``What's astonishing is how much ink she was able to generate," he said.

But not long after she returned, it was as if the trip that one New York newspaper called the ``most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman" had never happened. She moved to New York City, where she wrote a first-person account of her trek for the New York World newspaper, and she and her husband ran a factory that made women's clothing accessories.

She never regained her earlier fame, but often regaled friends and family with stories of her adventure.

Zheutlin said that even after his years of research, one big question remains.

``It's the great mystery of her life," he said. ``What allows one woman out of millions to seize the moment and break out?"

A preview of the documentary can be seen at the filmmakers' website, spokeswomanproductions.com. Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.