Pioneer Feminist and Female Motorist
In the book The car and British society: class, gender and motoring, 1896–1939, Sean O'Connell described Levitt as 'arguably the best known of the early women drivers' in an age when male prejudices against women drivers were typified by a 1905 item in Autocar which opined the hope that 'the controlling of motor cars will be wrested from the hands of ... these would be men'. Thus the preface to the first edition of her book The Woman and the Car: A chatty little handbook for all women who motor or who want to motor, stated that :
The public, in its mind's eye, no doubt figures this motor champion as a big, strapping Amazon. Dorothy Levitt is exactly, or almost so, the direct opposite of such a picture. She is the most girlish of womanly women.She was described as 'slight in nature, shy and shrinking, almost timid. Her book went on to state that be pleasure in being whisked around the country by your friends and relatives, or ... chauffeur, but the real intense pleasure only comes when you drive your own car.
Both Levitt's book and newspaper column in The Graphic described her atypical lifestyle for the Edwardian era, an independent, privileged, 'bachelor girl', living with friends in the 'West End' of London and waited on by two servants.
Read more about this topic: Dorothy Levitt
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