A chance find in a second-hand bookshop in the late 1980s provided the spark from which The Cycling Bibliograpy grew.  Ted Williams and his late wife were holidaying in the English Lake District, when the heavens opened.  They ducked into the shop for shelter, and Ted picked up a couple of books on cycling. 

 

Rain continued for much of the rest of the holiday, and so the couple spent more days in second-hand bookshops, and by the time they returned home to Staffordshire, Ted had the nucleus of what has grown to be a collection of more than 1,000 cycling titles.

 

"From then on, if we saw a charity shop, we would look in.  Then I stated jotting down books mentioned in one book in a little note book, and that got fuller and fuller – and that is when I started putting it down on to my BBC computer", Ted recalls.

Born in 1929, and brought up in Coseley, a town on Wolverhampton’s southern border, Ted cycled a good deal as a boy and a young man.  He was a member of Coseley Cycling Club, he cycled to work, to technical college and to facilitate his courting.  As his career as a professional engineer took off in the early 1950s, however, he followed the national trend, with an enthusiastic embrace of the motor car.

"Coseley Cycling Club disbanded, because people moved on, and I didn’t cycle again until the 1970s, when I started to worry that I was getting very unfit", he says.  He bought a bike, started to ride around the surrounding countryside, and soon joined the Wolverhampton Wheelers.  "As I came up to retirement, one of the older members invited me to join the ‘Thursday club’, a group of retired riders who set off for a day’s ride every Thursday from Codsall, the village in which I now live".

He has ridden with that same group, and the more recently formed ‘Tuesday club’ for 25 years now, although late onset asthma now restricts him to fair-weather cycling only.

 

As his list of books grew, Ted joined the Fellowship of Cycling Old Timers and came into contact with its late secretary, Derek Roberts.  Roberts stated to send Ted lists of books, to augment his nascent bibliography and put him in touch with other cycling historians, particularly Andrew Millward.

 

The first published edition of the bibliography was an example of real self publishing.  Ted laid out and printed 100 copies of his ‘Pocket Bibliography Of Cycling Books’.  He hand folded and stapled each copy, and sold them to bookshops as he continued his quest to augment his own cycling collection.

 

It sold out surprisingly quickly and so in 1993, the National Cycle Archive published a much larger version of the bibliography, this time listing the books by title, author and date.  There are approximately 2,000 in that edition, today there are more than 4,000 books catalogued.

 

A new print edition of the bibliography is planned, which Ted describes as being his swansong – although his personal collection continues to grow.  "I like the travel books best – reading about other people’s tours", he says.  "The most interesting are usually the people who write just one book, although I have enjoyed both Bettina Selby’s books, and Anne Mustoe’s.  He also lists James Arnold’s The Joyous Wheel among his personal favourites.

The idea of creating a Cycling Bibliography had strong links with the creation of a national collection of cycling literature. Indeed the idea dates back to the early days of cycling in the UK. When H Blackwell, of the Canonbury BC, compiled his \"Bibliography of Bicycling\" , he described it as \"being the first attempt to compile a list of cycling literature\". He was also aware of the significance of creating an ongoing collection of these works as he went on to note: 

"Of the bicycling publications, only those with an asterisk are in the British Museum Library, and neither the Guildhall or London Institution Libraries contain any work on Velocipedes or Bicycles."

Blackwell was determined to see this deficiency made good and occasional appeals were published in the cycling press at that time. By 1882 he had extended his bibliography significantly   and he noted:

"As the British Museum Library contains very few wheel publications, cyclists and publishers are earnestly requested to assist in forming a complete collection of wheel literature, under the care of the Bicycle Union...". 

It is not known what became of Blackwell's efforts, but the BU's library was ultimately transferred by the National Cyclists Union to Coventry Public Library where it was destroyed in the air raid of 1940. 

Blackwell's bibliography is an important starting point for anyone researching the early decades of cycling in the UK. Subsequent periods are covered in overseas publications such as Karl Kron   and CM Van Stockum  , but the next significant published Bibliography was that of JT Lightwood  . In this work Lightwood noted that "It is over fifty years since any attempt has been made to publish a list of books, journals and other publications connected with cycling." He went on to suggest that the list might act as a stimulus to collecting when he noted that "Many of the books mentioned are in the Historical Library at the Club's Headquarters, and it is hoped to make the collection as complete as possible. " This declaration was, however, against the prevailing mood of the Club up to that time which had actually turned historic items away including the minute books of the Amateur Bicycle Club only a few years before. Lightwood was probably encouraged to say this since the Club had moved to more spacious Offices at Craven Hill in 1927. Certainly the Club acquired a significant (although not comprehensive) collection of books up to the 1998 when its collection was finally transferred to the National Cycle Archive at Warwick University.

A half century after Lightwood there was an initiative amongst three members (Douglas Marchant, Derek Roberts and Harold Scott) of the Southern Veteran-Cycle Club (now the Veteran-Cycle Club) to update and compile a more extensive Bibliography than Lightwood's which would be maintained and updated for the use of Club members. The efforts were partly funded by the V-CC Committee.  The project was an ambitious one because it was intended that each book should be reviewed but the scope of the team's efforts was similar to Lightwood's and was intended to cover journals, magazines and road books.  This ambition was partly its undoing, alongside disagreements over what to classify as a book about cycling; for example, works of fiction where a bicycle or cycling might have been a part of the story. As a consequence Roberts and Scott left the project which was finally abandoned following Marchant's death. However, the project produced a number of lists of books and some card index files with annotated information relating to some cycling journals.   

The author's interest in Bibliography arose during his work as a student compiling a literature review albeit narrowly focused on works relating to economics and business affecting the cycle industry. The starting point was the references contained in previous studies by Hudson  , Harrison  and extended searches of the British Library Catalogue and Books in Print such as Preddie . However, it soon became clear that none of the existing bibliographies were comprehensive or rigorous as sometimes the simplest attempts to compile a bibliography could throw up new information missed by earlier works . The need to create a more substantial and comprehensive Bibliography to benefit future researchers into cycles and cycling was identified as an issue during the late 1980s.

The concept of a National Cycle Archive stemmed from the author's realisation, following the disposal of the AT Johnson Collection  in the late 1980s, that there were a number of significant and substantial private archives and collections in danger of being broken up. These were chiefly the CTC's collection at Godalming , Bill Bush's Collection  and Derek Roberts' Collection . The Trust, through the National Cycle Archive, has worked to save these for future researchers in the UK.

During the 1980s there was a growing interest in more professional approaches to historiography in the V-CC which was encouraged mainly by Nick Clayton, the Editor of its magazine The Boneshaker who published lists of collections. This was valuable in identifying surviving material particularly if it existed for public reference.  This interest encouraged the author to publish his list of the contents of the Raleigh Archive .

Another useful, and unacknowledged source was the sales catalogues of David Twitchett published in the late 1960s and 1970s. Twitchett was a specialist dealer in cycling material and he circulated his lists which contained detailed information of cycling literature with reviews and descriptions of content in many cases. A set of these are held in the National Cycle Archive .

The original intention of the Trust in supporting and publishing the Bibliography.

Once a fund for the NCA had been set up in 1990 a collecting policy was needed and a list of items which needed to be acquired as a priority. The original concept was for the NCA to have a comprehensive collection in one location for anyone researching into cycles and cycling in the UK. Creating a bibliography therefore became an important issue for the Trust.

Coincidentally at this point in time, through Derek Roberts, the author came into contact with Ted Williams who, quite independently  had been compiling a list of cycling books. Ted discussed his Bibliography with the author early in August 1990. At that stage Ted was looking for further books to add to his list. He sent this list to the author on 14th August 1990 and there followed a number of exchanges of information and meetings with the Bibliography and the NCA in mind. Ted not only went on to compile the Bibliography, but also played a crucial part in developing the National Cycle Archive and developing the Trust. 

From these early discussions between the author and Ted the following informed the NCA approach to the Bibliography:

i) It was intended that initially only a list of books should be created. This removed the complications surrounding the V-CC Bibliography which had ground to a virtual halt about this time. (Both Ted and the author were invited to join this project, but both declined). It was thought more important that a list should be published for researchers and collectors as a precursor to a more extended work.

Ted produced his first complete draft in August 1991. However, publication was delayed until after the Trust had completed its publication of the Proceedings of the First International History Conference which was not achieved until the end of 1992 . In the interim Ted produced his Pocket Bibliography of Cycling Books early in 1993  and the complete Bibliography was finally published by the Trust in September 1993 .

ii) It was intended that the list should form the basis of an extended Bibliography. A precise plan was not agreed about how this should be done, but it was considered that it might be feasible (particularly through the assistance of competent volunteers) to take a decade or period and provide details of each book within that, and publish each of these as a distinct work. 

Another idea was to separate the work into sections eg distinguishing leaflets and pamphlets from books, distinguishing works by country of origin, breaking into different subject sections or categories etc.  It was also suggested that a separate list of periodicals be added, updating Lightwood's 1928 list.

iii) It was intended that the Bibliography should be re-printed at regular intervals. This was not achieved, because the economics involved in publishing ruled this out. The NCA at that time had to operate independently of the main Trust in respect of its finances and this ruled out large expenditure until sales restored the balance. As a means of raising funds more quickly a series of reprints of early velocipede books was done with Ted's initiative, but these did not generate the funds quickly enough. 

iv) The Bibliography was intended to act as a shopping list for the Trust so that it could identify items it held in the collection. This would mean denoting items in the NCA perhaps using an asterisk as Blackwell did. This would hopefully serve to encourage people to donate or put missing copies the way of the Trust and make it easy to identify if any item offered to the Trust was already in the collection. 

v) The Bibliography was an early product of the NCA and was helpful as a marketing tool to put the organisation on the map. The initial effort was not capitalised on but in future this potential should be developed as a means of providing the Trust's work to the wider public.