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THE FIRST AUTHOR WHO WROTE A NOVEL USING A TYPEWRITER

Published: 2025-11-30 16:00:06 Last Updated: 2025-12-01 11:03:28

Mark Twain claimed to be the "first person in the world who ever had a telephone in his house for practical reasons" in his 1904 autobiography. Additionally, he claimed to be the first author to utilise a typewriter for "manuscript labour." Despite being one of the most prolific writers in history, Mark Twain's assertion of his typewritten manuscript appears to be historically accurate.
According to his autobiography, Twain started typing his letters in December 1874. He refers to his Remington typewriter as a "new-fangled writing-machine" that "needs a brain to work it just write" in his first two typewritten letters. Less than a year later, the writer gave up on his typewriter, called it a “curiosity-breeding little joker,” and tried to pawn it off to two different people (it was eventually returned to him in both cases). He even went so far as to use his pen name, Samuel L. Clemens, to write a letter to E. Remington & Sons complaining about the machine.
He begs, "Please don't even reveal that I own a machine." "I have completely stopped using the typewriter since I was never able to write a letter to anyone using it without getting a request via return mail asking me to explain the machine and outline my progress in using it."

Twain didn't give the typewriter its due until much later. According to a chapter in his memoirs, he dictated The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his 1876 book, to his machinist, who typed it in 1874. However, Tom Sawyer's own memory was confused because the book was published from a handwritten manuscript rather than a typed one.

The most likely scenario is Life on the Mississippi, which arrived at its publisher in typescript and was issued seven years after Tom Sawyer in 1883. Twain may have misremembered the particular facts, but Life on the Mississippi was, by all historical accounts, the first novel to be sent to a publisher in typed form. For someone who frequently claimed that the typewriter was "ruining his morality" and "making him want to swear," this is quite an accomplishment.

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