Mark Twain: The First 'Typewriter' Author

When you think of Mark Twain as the first typewriter author, you're only getting half the story — and the half you're missing is more interesting than the myth. He bought his Remington in late 1874 for $125, hated it almost immediately, and rarely typed a word himself. His secretary did the actual typing. The so-called "first typewritten manuscript" wasn't even Tom Sawyer — and the full truth gets stranger from there.

Key Takeaways

• Twain purchased his first typewriter in late 1874 for $125, modeled after the Sholes & Glidden/Remington design manufactured since 1873.
• Despite boasting about early adoption, Twain rarely typed himself; his secretary Isabel V. Lyon handled most actual typing duties.
• Life on the Mississippi, submitted in 1883, is credited as the first typewritten manuscript received by a publisher, though Lyon typed it via dictation.
• Twain's claim of writing the first typewritten book is inaccurate; Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, predating the 1883 typescript distinction.
• Twain complained the typewriter "ruined morals" and induced swearing, eventually gifting the troublesome machine to writer William Dean Howells.

Why Twain Bought a Typewriter in 1874 and Immediately Regretted It

But early disappointment hit fast. The machine was full of caprices and defects, and recipients constantly pestered him with questions about it. Mechanical frustration pushed him to refuse Remington's testimonial request in March 1875, calling it a "curiosity-breeding little joker."

Despite being one of the first 400 buyers, Twain soured on the typewriter within months of his enthusiastic purchase. The machine he had bought late in 1874 for $125 printed only bald, serifless capitals, yet it still managed to bring its owner considerable joy before the frustration set in. The two known letters he typed on the Sholes & Glidden were both sent on December 9, 1874, one to his brother Orion Clemens and another to writer William Dean Howells.

What Did Twain Actually Buy, and When?

Twain's typewriter story actually spans two distinct machines separated by decades. His purchase timeline covers more than 30 years of typewriter evolution.

Machine One: The Remington (1874)

1. Purchased in 1874 for $125
2. Likely modeled after the Sholes and Glidden design
3. He gave it away twice, yet it kept returning to him

Machine Two: The Williams No. 6 (1908)

1. Purchased in 1908, just two years before his death
2. Featured a "grasshopper" mechanism letting you see text while typing
3. Serial number confirms its typewriter provenance and 1908 manufacture date
4. The Williams No. 6 later sold at auction for $106,250, more than quadrupling its original estimate.

Between these two machines, Twain actually typed Life on the Mississippi in 1883, bridging both eras. Each machine represents a dramatically different chapter in his complicated relationship with early technology. Notably, Twain did not type Life on the Mississippi himself but instead dictated from a handwritten draft to a typist. Despite his frustrations, Twain's early adoption of the Remington helped mark the beginning of a major shift in publishing, as mechanical typing gradually replaced longhand calligraphy across the literary world.

Why Early Typewriters Could Only Type in Capitals

When Twain bought his first Remington in 1874, he was getting a machine that could only type in capitals — and that wasn't a quirk, it was simply how early typewriters worked. The mechanical constraints of pre-1870s machines meant each typebar carried a single uppercase symbol, with no mechanism to produce lowercase letters. That uppercase design kept things simple, but it meant you couldn't vary case at all.

Remington changed that by mounting two symbols on each typebar and adding a shift key that moved the entire typebar apparatus, letting different portions strike the ribbon. So when Twain sat down at his Remington, he wasn't just using a novelty — he was using one of the first machines capable of producing both upper and lowercase text. Typing in all capitals for extended periods required significant mechanical force to hold the shift key down, making the physical act of writing a genuine workout for the hand.

The early typewriter had originally featured an alphabetically arranged keyboard before Sholes rearranged the keys based on the frequency of common letter pairs to reduce the chronic jamming that plagued the sluggish typebar action of the era. The rearranged layout placed common letter pairs like TH and ST far apart, forcing the corresponding typebars to travel from opposite sides of the machine and significantly cutting down on collisions.

Why Twain Called His Typewriter a "Curiosity-Breeding Joker"

So Twain wasn't just using a mechanical novelty — he was one of the few people who owned one at all, and that came with its own headaches.

Owning one made him a curiosity himself. People constantly wrote in demanding to know:

1. What the machine looked like
2. How it worked
3. How far along he'd gotten using it

Twain hated writing letters, so the endless inquiries drove him mad. His promotional aversion ran equally deep — he wrote Remington in March 1875, signing as "Saml. L. Clemens," demanding they stop using his name in advertisements and instructing them to keep his ownership secret.

The machine quirks weren't helping either. He called his typewriter a "curiosity-breeding little joker" — a label that captured both its novelty and its nuisance perfectly. Eventually, he grew so fed up that he gave the troublesome machine away, sending it to his friend William Dean Howells — later joking that Howells's morals never recovered from the gift.

Howells himself reported serious mechanical failures with the machine, including letters that wouldn't strike the ribbon and keys that refused to return without manual assistance. The machine bounced between owners after that, eventually ending up with Twain's coachman Patrick McAleer, who traded it away for a side-saddle. Twain's enthusiasm for technology didn't end there — he later sank much of his fortune into a failed Paige Compositor investment, a mechanical typesetter that ultimately ruined him financially.

Which of Twain's Books Was Really the First Typewritten Novel?

Following the literary chronology correctly, Life on the Mississippi holds the real distinction.

Submitted in typescript form in 1883, it became the first typewritten manuscript Twain's publisher actually received. However, Twain didn't type it himself—he dictated it to an assistant.

Some historians also classify it as memoir rather than novel. Either way, Tom Sawyer's claim is fiction, and Life on the Mississippi earns the credit. This was seven years after Tom Sawyer was published in 1876.

The original Tom Sawyer manuscript, notable for its legible handwriting and minimal revisions, is bound in red moroccan leather and held at Georgetown University Library.

The Tom Sawyer Myth Twain Got Wrong About Himself

Mark Twain couldn't even keep his story straight about who Tom Sawyer really was. His identity claim shifted depending on his audience. Here's what you need to know:

1. In 1907, Twain told a young girl, "I am Tom Sawyer," contradicting his earlier Roughing It denial.
2. He'd actually met the real-life Sawyer — a hard-drinking San Francisco fireman — while recovering from a hangover in 1863, prowling streets together near a San Francisco saloon that later burned down.
3. A 1923 biography also named several Hannibal boys as partial models, further muddying Twain's story.

Despite the contradictions, neither Twain nor Sawyer ever disputed the association publicly, and hundreds of San Franciscans familiar with both men never challenged it either. The real Tom Sawyer had reportedly saved 90 lives during the 1853 Independence shipwreck off Baja, swimming survivors to shore singlehandedly before he ever crossed paths with Twain. Twain's fictional St. Petersburg, the town name he repeatedly used as a stand-in for Hannibal, Missouri, also appeared in his unfinished manuscripts, including the Schoolhouse Hill version of The Mysterious Stranger, which featured both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn alongside a character called No. 44.

Twain Didn't Actually Type His Manuscripts: His Secretary Did

Twain loved to boast about being an early typewriter adopter — but he rarely did the actual typing himself. His secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, handled the real work. She managed typing duties alongside household finances, editing, and social responsibilities — making her central to any honest discussion of secretary authorship in Twain's career.

Lyon typed Life on the Mississippi, the manuscript Twain submitted to his publisher in 1883 — the one now recognized as the first author-submitted typewritten manuscript. Yet manuscript attribution historically favored Twain alone. He dictated; Lyon typed. That distinction matters.

You might assume famous authors personally operated their machines, but late 1800s writing culture relied heavily on dictation. Twain simply owned the typewriter — his secretary did the work that earned it its historical footnote. He originally purchased his 1874 Sholes & Glidden Type Writer with the hope of writing faster and more neatly. The typewriter itself had been manufactured by E. Remington & Sons starting in 1873, just a year before Twain acquired his machine.

The Typewriter Got Better After 1878: Twain's Opinion Didn't

By 1878, Remington had fixed the typewriter's biggest flaw — the Model 2 introduced a cylinder-shifting mechanism that finally allowed both upper and lowercase letters on the same bar. The machine's mechanical persistence paid off, but Twain's authorial resistance never softened. Here's what changed — and what didn't:

1. The Model 2 corrected the capital-letters-only limitation that plagued the original.
2. Remington successfully marketed the improved machine to a wider audience.
3. Twain still accused the typewriter of ruining his morals and inducing swearing.

Despite the improvements, Twain abandoned his machine within a year, calling it a "curiosity-breeding joker." He'd complained directly to Remington under his real name, Samuel L. Clemens, even requesting secrecy to avoid fielding description requests from curious readers. A portable typewriter wouldn't arrive until 1909, decades after Twain had already made his distaste for the technology abundantly clear.

Remington, undeterred by Twain's private grievances, turned his early ownership into a publicity opportunity, publishing a letter in Harper's as part of a marketing campaign to promote the machine to a broader audience.

How Twain's Grudging Typewriter Use Changed Publishing Forever

You can trace modern editorial workflows directly back to that moment. Publishers began expecting typed submissions, boosting production efficiency and accelerating literary output across the industry.

Twain's reluctant experiment sparked debates about mandatory typewritten manuscripts, pushing authorship into a machine-driven era. His personal skepticism didn't matter — the typewriter had already proven its value. What started as one writer's complaint became the foundation of how publishing operates today.