Ask Mike: The first typewritten novel
Hey Guys,
When I have to take notes with a pen and paper, my hand tends to cramp up after a few minutes (pathetic, I know). How in the world did novelists write entire tomes in the old days? I set out to learn which writer was the first to say “forget this quill and paper nonsense” and compose a novel with a typewriter.
Like a lot of life’s most interesting questions, this one isn’t exactly answerable. There’s just no way to know for sure who was the first author to write with keys instead of ink. That said, most experts tend to give the honor to Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.
Helium.com writes that Twain, in his autobiography, stated that he believed he was the first person to “apply the type-machine to literature” when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain didn’t actually type the manuscript himself. Rather, the mustached maestro hired a professional to listen to his dictation.
But not everyone agrees that “Tom Sawyer” was the first book written on a typewriter. A well-researched entry from the blog circadianoesis contends that Twain’s memoir “Life on the Mississippi” is more likely the first typewritten manuscript. Other sources on the Web agree.
Now, of course, typewriters have gone the way of the dodo. Anybody know who was the first writer to publish a novel written on a computer instead of a typewriter? Take a look around the Web and leave a comment below!
Thanks for reading,
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
- Rating:
(26 votes, average: 4.15) - Permalink
- Comments (19)
Loading ...
Subscribe
sick
you got a good blog but can you tell me what the SECURITY PIN IS >:( I NEED IT FOR MAPLE STORY SO I CAN MAKE MY OWN MINI MAPLE!!!! sorry if i got REALLY mad at you for a pin sorry
Back then you had no choice BUT to do it the hard way or… not do it at all. In many, most cases if you DIDN’T do it you suffered or starved or died. It was a tough choice: do it and survive or don’t do it and perish.
A novelist had to believe in his novel and so want to publish it that he MADE himself endure the pains of writing it because he believed in his message that much.
alright, so i just did some research and I can’t seem to find anything. Mostly all I can find is the information on the first novel typed on a typewriter, which many people agree to be “Life on the Mississippi”, although there is some evidence to say that his secretary typed it out for him. I am, however, quite curious which novel was the first computer written novel. Get back at me?
Thanks.
It is generally thought that the first typewritten novel was ‘Tom Sawyer’ published in 1876 by Samuel Clemens under the pseudonym of Mark Twain who purchased the first ever typewriter, pre-cursor to the more famous ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ thought there is evidence that he sold the typewriter in 1875 and that ‘Life on the Mississippi was in fact the first typewritten novel though it wasn’t published until 1883
I don’t know about first to go to computer, but here’s a nice little tidbit: the first to publish on cellphone was Matt Patin, and his story was OMG! I’ll keep digging for the other
Hi:
It might be true the typewriter went the way of the dodo bird but for it heyday there was no better way to write things. but they had there problems:
1) They jammed up it you tried to type faster than a few dozen letter a second
2) No spell correction ,word lookup, dictionary… etc..
Meaning you make a mistake you had to throw out a one page of paper { until some lady hit upon the idea to use white nail polish – inventing “white out” still you to wait for it to dry and then type over it again. } and retype the Whole thing over again .. think of the money lost on the wasted paper
3) Over time, the typewriter keys didn’t strike the paper hard enough to make good impression on the paper . You had to take into a typewriter repair shop to have to key bar shorten or tighten up to get it back into shape again and it cost you penty
4) They were costy but it you could afford it. they where a Godsend . you could write anything
5) if needed a copy, you had to retype it again or use carbon paper which was sometimes messy.
6) Today computers with word processing programs can run ring around to the old typewritters you can write a rough draft. Check your spelling, Grammer, highlight,italics, do bold use differents fonts, Some models or programs can do word look up so it need to find some other word for stength, it can get you the info right on the screen and replace it . Then there is putting any pictures you want on a page, postion it where you what it to be. and do a word wrap and the word go around .
Still the romance of it is good. It didn’t need electrictry or a computer program. It was a work of mechanical engineering. People using one of those typewriter where the own word processor and they where talented and they didn’t make too many mistakes on it they would think todays word processors and printer were a insult to them.
But what the hay. the typewritter really didn’t disappear. It just evolved as the technology got better. It is amazing how far we have come it.
I remember a few years back a typewritter was sold for I think 175,000 dollar because it was own by Ivan Flemming the Writer of James Bond
I couldn’t find any reference to this, but a little voice in the back of my mind leads me to think it was ( appropriately) Sir Arthur C. Clarke–perhaps one of the later Rama series novels.
Even if he didn’t, he should have….
Alternately, it might have been Isaak Azimov….again, a guess.
Not asked, was who wrote the first novel on a cell phone… and that answer, date July 12th, 2007 is here:
http://www.bigbadbookblog.com/2007/07/12/first-novel-written-on-cell-phone-omfg/
“While Twain has unofficially received credit for being a landmark typist, there are other famous writers who are also credited with using a typewriter to write literature. One such person is author/actress Fanny Kemble, who is actually listed on several websites as the first person to submit a typewritten manuscript. The problem with this scenario, just as with Twain, is that there is little to no evidence available to substantiate this claim. Kemble is famous for having written Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, as well many other literary works, but there appears to be no record that these writings were ever typewritten by the writer. Either author, any author for that matter, could have been the first to submit a typewritten novel, but since this bit of trivia was not very important at the time of publication, the identity of the mystery author may never be truly known. Lacking any empirical evidence, it seems that the popular vote in this literary contest has gone to Mark Twain. It seems that once speculation becomes engrained in the general mindset of a population as substantiated fact, however questionable its validity may seem, it ceases to be speculation.”
Yes, I am bored . . .
(
Those two comments are so worth the minute I spent skimming this blog thing….
Dont people usually write on the cumputer and then print!!
I use Wordpad for mi stories lol
Henry James dictated some of his novels to a typist. He was a contemporary of Twain.
I found possibly the first book penned on smartphone. http://blog.laptopmag.com/novelist-pens-first-book-on-smart-phone-succeeds-in-making-us-look-like-slackers
I keep getting blurbs about “look at my first book!” Heh.
welkm
I like typewriters.
I believe the first book written on computer was done by science fiction author Dr. Jerry Pournelle. Figuring a time of 1980 or before, it would have been his novel Janissaries (1979). You can ask him if you’d like. He answers email. His address is jerryp@jerrypournelle.com
(If you’re not familiar with Pournelle’s work, he frequently collaborates with Larry Niven.
im not sure. i write my fanfiction on a computer. i take notes with a notebook and pen and i write alot that way but…A WHOLE BOOK!??? i couldnt do that! D:
wergtrwg
A couple of things, there are still writers today who write longhand. If I recall correctly, Danielle Steele is one of them. That said, I went to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA, when they had a Mark Twain exhibit. They had many pages of his handwritten notes and drafts, and one of the “charmers” in line was saying, “Look at that… he can’t even spell… look how many times he had to cross out… look at that… he was such a moron!”
Clearly someone who had no idea how many times he uses a backspace or delete key, or the spell checker, and probably “your” when it should be “you’re” for that matter. Assuming he can keyboard at all…