Mark Twain Was the First Person To Use a Typewriter To Write a Novel

Mark Twain Was the First Person To Use a Typewriter To Write a Novel In his 1904 autobiography, Mark Twain asserted that he was the “first person in the world who ever had a telephone in his house for practical purposes.” He also purported to be the first writer to use a typewriter for what he called “manuscript work.” As one of the world’s most prolific authors, Twain was […] READ: Mark Twain Was the First Person To Use a Typewriter To Write a Novel

Art Dec 1, 2025 0 2 Add to Reading List

Mark Twain Was the First Person To Use a Typewriter To Write a Novel

Portrait of writer Mark Twain, taken by A.F. Bradley in New York, 1907. (Public domain)

In his 1904 autobiography, Mark Twain asserted that he was the “first person in the world who ever had a telephone in his house for practical purposes.” He also purported to be the first writer to use a typewriter for what he called “manuscript work.” As one of the world’s most prolific authors, Twain was no stranger to hyperbole, and yet his claim about his typewritten manuscript seems historically accurate.

According to his autobiography, Twain began typing his correspondence in December 1874. In his first two typewritten letters, he describes his Remington typewriter as a “new-fangled writing-machine,” one that “requires a genius in order to work it just write.” Hardly a year later, the author abandoned his typewriter, disparaged it as a “curiosity-breeding little joker,” and attempted to pawn it off on others two separate times (it was ultimately returned to him in both instances). He even went so far as to complain about the machine in a letter to E. Remington & Sons, signing it off with his pseudonym, Samuel L. Clemens.

“Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine,” he implores. “I have entirely stopped using the typewriter for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it.”

It was only later that Twain gave the typewriter its due. A chapter of his autobiography alleges that he dictated his 1876 novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, to his machinist, who then type-copied the book in 1874. But Tom Sawyer was published from a handwritten manuscript, not a typed one, thus muddling the author’s own recollection.

The more likely scenario comes in the form of Life on the Mississippi, which arrived at its publisher in typescript and was released seven years after Tom Sawyer in 1883. Twain may have misremembered the precise details, but Life on the Mississippi was, by all historical accounts, the first novel to be submitted to a publisher in typed form. It’s quite an achievement, especially for someone who repeatedly accused the typewriter of “ruining his morals” and “making him want to swear.”