[Editor’s note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we’ll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 30, 2011.] There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of one of your favorite authors at work – even a photo of the epic event can send an anxious thrill down your spine, as if you might be able to see some hint of literary genius in posture or setting, in attire or facial expression. And it’s even better if they’re working on a typewriter. After all, there’s something impossibly gorgeous about a typewriter – maybe it’s the vintage charm, maybe it’s the physicality the noisy machine lends to the writing process, but people (and you can count us among them) go mad for typewriters, especially if they’ve been used by someone famous. Inspired by LIFE’s “In Praise of the Typewriter” photo gallery, we decided to compile all our favorite authors-at-work-on-typewriters photographs for your viewing pleasure, so click through to indulge in a little vintage literary eye candy.
William Faulkner, 1943
Sylvia Plath
Ernest Hemingway, 1939
Leonard Cohen
Francoise Sagan, 1955
Agatha Christie, 1946
Marlon Brando, 1954 (okay, okay, we know he’s an actor, but look how dapper and be-catted he is)
Langston Hughes, 1945
George Orwell
William S. Burroughs, 1959
Alfred Hitchcock, 1939
Charles Bukowski, 1988
John Cheever, 1979
James Jones, 1950
Bob Dylan
Tennessee Williams, 1946
Dorothy Parker, 1937
Saul Bellow
Faulkner again. Just because.
