Dorothy Levitt

A contemporary and English counterpart to Joan Cuneo (America's top woman race driver) Dorothy Levitt was not only a competition driver but aviator and author as well. The attached article about Levitt was published April 11, 1909, the same day as another article on Joan Cuneo and a third female "motorist," Alice Potter. All of this attention on female drivers probably stemmed from the American Automobile Association's (AAA) decision to ban women from motorized competition after Cuneo's successful run at a race in New Orleans.
 
As for Levitt she had just published one of her books, "The Woman and the Car," and like any author was busy promoting it through the media. In the article some information from the book is extracted as tips for female motorists. Among these are to avoid leather coats, wear kid leather gloves, be confident women can learn to drive as quickly as men and to purchase one-cylinder cars because they are simpler and easier to maintain. As an aside one of Levitt's great claims to fame is that many say she trained England's Queen Alexandra in driving an automobile.