Reviewed by: The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices by Martyn Lyons James Inglis (bio) The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices By Martyn Lyons. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. Pp. 261. Written by historian of reading and writing practices Martyn Lyons, this book explores the relationship between creative writers and their typewriters. The "Typewriter Century," as Lyons defines it, began in the 1880s with the widespread commercialization of the typewriter and Mark Twain's claim to be the first novelist to use a writing machine. The century ended in the 1980s as word-processing technologies superseded typewriters. Although, as noted, the typewriter is experiencing something of a comeback in the twenty-first century. This work expands on Lyons's 2014 article in Quærendo, which looked at the use of typewriters by Henry James and Jack Kerouac. In addition, there are sections on the typing practices of George Simenon, Erle Stanley Gardner, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, and many other authors. This book has been released at a time of renewed scholarly interest in the history of typewriters, with Thomas Mullaney's The Chinese Typewriter (2017) a shining example. The most significant contribution made in this work is in shedding light on the variety of ways creative writers interacted with writing machines. For some, the typewriter created a "distancing effect," as Lyons puts it. For these writers, typewriters produced text that was both detached from their thoughts and impersonal to the reader. Helpfully, Lyons identifies several examples of writers who expressed their guilt at writing private letters "with the machine" but were obliged to do so because of the sheer volume of their correspondence. In stark contrast, other authors had a "romantic" vision of their typewriter, believing that the machine was irreplaceable in enabling rapid, instinctive, and spontaneous composition. Here, Lyons draws an improbable but fascinating comparison between children's author Enid Blyton and the Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac. Despite writing for very different audiences, both are said to have typed in a trancelike state, with their ideas flooding through the keys onto the paper in a stream of consciousness. Lyons links the automatic writing styles of Kerouac, Blyton, and others with typing practices in clerical work. In office settings, typists were sometimes expected to transcribe documentation rapidly without engaging with the content. The links between office work and creative writing are also drawn out in Lyons's chapter on Erle Stanley Gardner, the author of the long-running Perry Mason detective series. Gardner's creative output was prodigious. So to keep up with his writing, he set up a "Fiction Factory" with a permanent typing pool, fitted out with the latest typewriters, Dictaphones, and office technologies. Here Lyons presents a new perspective on general user practices in clerical work, for which there is considerable scholarly interest. [End Page 1216] As this is a trade book, Lyons has chosen to devote considerable space to general interest topics, including a potted history of the typewriter. However, this chapter is based on a seemingly cursory reading of the secondary literature resulting in several inaccuracies. For example, Lyons writes that early typewriting historian George Mares "could not foresee the advent of the electric typewriter" in The History of the Typewriter, published in 1909. In fact, in this very book, Mares included a detailed description of the Blickensderfer Electric, one of the earliest commercially manufactured electric typewriters. These mistakes have a bearing on the overall argument as when it comes to engaging with the artifacts themselves, readers from a history of technology background may have wished for greater engagement with the array of designs that emerged throughout The Typewriter Century. At times, Lyons comes tantalizingly close to such an approach. For instance, it is noted that Henry James was spurred on by the clicking of his Remington and that his inspiration dried up after his typist upgraded to a quieter Oliver typewriter. But such references to different designs are thrown in by Lyons anecdotally, with little analysis. Perhaps this work can serve as a starting point for a detailed exploration of the impact that different styles of typewriter had on writing practices. As a whole, this book...
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