Penny-farthing the trend was short-lived, the penny-farthing became a symbol of the late Victorian era. Its popularity also coincided with the birth of cycling as a sport. Eugène Meyer of Paris, France is now regarded as the father of the high bicycle by the International Cycling History Conference in place of James Starley. Meyer patented a wire-spoke tension wheel with individually adjustable spokes in 1869. They were called "spider" wheels in Britain when introduced there. Meyer produced a classic high bicycle design during the 1880s. James Starley in Coventry added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle
A Journal of the Plague Year Pepys's first-person account. Whether the "Journal" can properly be regarded as a novel has been disputed. It was initially read as a work of non-fiction, but by the 1780s the work's fictional status was accepted. Debate continued as to whether Defoe could be regarded as the work's author rather than merely its editor. One modern literary critic has asserted that 'the invented detail is... small and inessential', while Watson Nicholson – writing in 1919 – argued that the work can be regarded as 'authentic history'. Other literary critics have argued that the work can indeed be regarded as a work