Doodles by Lewis Carroll: Handwritten Manuscript Pages From Classic Books
These paper-and-ink drafts offer glimpses into the creative habits of 25 authors who wrote their timeless works the old-fashioned way.
These days, almost all works of literature are written on computers, from the first inklings saved in a .doc called "notes," to the final, emailed-out draft. They're even, increasingly, read on computers. In such a climate, it's even easier to be fascinated by the handwritten drafts and original manuscripts of classic literature, from which much can be inferred via handwriting, paper choice, and strength of pen marks. With more than a little help from awesome Tumblr Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!, I've collected a few favorite specimens. Below, peek at the handwritten manuscripts and drafts of some of the world's greatest novels—the elegant script or frantic cross-outs of your favorite authors.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's manuscript of The Great Gatsby. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Handwritten page of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Mark Twain's handwritten manuscript pages from the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
A page from the manuscript of Sartre's Nausea. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
From John Steinbeck's handwritten manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
From William Faulkner's manuscript for A Light in August. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
A draft of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
From Charles Dickens's manuscript for A Christmas Carol. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
A manuscript page from the 14th chapter of Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
The manuscript for Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Edith Wharton's manuscript for The House of Mirth. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
A manuscript page from Franz Kafka's The Trial. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
From W. Somerset Maugham's manuscript for Of Human Bondage. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
The original manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
First page of Vladimir Nabokov's first draft of Invitation to a Beheading (Приглашение на Казнь). [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
George Eliot's manuscript of Middlemarch. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Victor Hugo's manuscript for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris). [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
The first page of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Charlotte Brontë's fair copy of Jane Eyre, written out by hand to be sent for publication. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
A manuscript page from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
The original manuscript of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (Il Principe). [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
The last page from Marcel Proust's manuscript of A la recherche du temps perdu. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
From Jane Austen's original manuscript of Persuasion. [ Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
Manuscript fragment of James Joyce's Ulysses. [via Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!]
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