Cultural history class this week includes the bicycle boom of the 1890s.
Newspapers from this period are filled with the complaints of men who say bicycles ruined their marriages, since wives only care to ride and no longer tend to their "duties."
The Rev. Thomas Gregory saw the bike as a threat to his parishioners' intellect and health.
"It annihilates the reading habit. The libraries are deserted. It is a menace to domestic virtues. It breaks up and destroys the home."
And then there's the other connection: she sketched the plot of the book during the really grey and rainy summer 1816, which was due to the eruption of the #Tambora#volcano in Indonesia. "The summer that wasn't there" in Europe also led to mis-harvests and the rise of a new means of transportation: the #bicycle.