Celia Thaxter Sold Typewriters

A recent eBay auction reminds us that our “Island Poet” Celia Thaxter was a modern woman using state-of-the-art equipment. By 1886 she was writing on a high-tech typewriter and endorsed it in Harper’s Weekly.

FROM AN AD IN HARPER’S WEEKLY
Celia Thaxter, who does all her literary work on this writer, says of it:
“I have used the Caligraph and other type-writer, and do not hesitate
to pronounce the HALL TYPE-WRITER
greatly superior in all respects to any I have seen.
— Celia Thaxter  Isles of Shoals, June 12, 1886.
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We who spend hours a day chained to computers are not greatly advanced from our Victorian ancestors. The rise of business machines began in the second half of the 19^th century. Adding machines, mimeographs, the stenograph shorthand machines and typewriters sold in the hundreds of thousands. The sound of a pen scratching on paper was soon replaced by clacking machines, both in the office and in homes.

New England writer Celia Laighton Thaxter was among the pioneers of these new labor saving devices. Her endorsement of the latest Hall Type-Writer appeared in this November 19, 1887 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Considered a “a favorite with clergymen and literary men,” this machine, manufactured in nearby Salem, MA, sold for $40 (about $800 in modern money), fully half to one-third of competing machines. An even cheaper version, the Edison Mimeograph Typewriter, sold for half the price, under $25.

Despite her glowing review, she backed the wrong horse. Her model was technically an “index” machine that used adjustable rotating wheels that combined to locate letters of the alphabet, much like an early calculator. When the letter was set, the operator struck the hammer to print a single letter, then reset the machine. The index machine offered interchangeable fonts at just one dollar each. But it was slow and soon faded as the familiar typewriter, with a key representing each letter of the alphabet, dominated the marketplace.

Celia’s typed manuscript for the poem “The Maiden” appeared for sale on eBay. The typed poem, was later revised and published as “Because of Thee.” The poem was edited by her fellow Seacoast poet, Sarah Orne Jewett, and re-published in 1896, four years after Celia’s early death. .