Annie Cohen Kopchovsky

(Latvia, 1870 – 1947) Known as Annie Londonderry, was a Jewish Latvian immigrant to the United States who became the first woman to bicycle around the world. After having completed her travel, she built a media career around engagement with popular conception of what it was to be female. Annie was a brilliant saleswoman and an exceptional storyteller, raising all of the money and attracting the media attention necessary for her trip to be a success.

 

Her main income was from selling advertising space on her bike and person, hanging ribbons and signs for products ranging from bicycle tires to perfume. After the trip, she accepted an offer to write about her adventures as the “New Woman” and moved her family to New York City to continue her journalism career. The article began “I am a journalist and a new-woman, if that term means that I believe I can do anything that any man can do.”