Researching “The Typewriter Century”
As a vehicle for outstanding creativity, the typewriter has been taken for granted and was, until now, a blind spot in the history of writing practices. The Typewriter Century: A Cultural History of Writing Practices provides a cultural history of the typewriter and explores “celebrity writers,” including Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, and Erle Stanley Gardner. In this post, author Martyn Lyons shares what a day in the life of a researcher looks like as he discusses some of the meticulous archival research that went into his book.