My Top 5 Books Written in the Typewriter Era

Though the typewriter isn't completely dead, this week's announcement chronicling the demise of one of the last typewriter factories is definitely a sign that the once powerful tool is going kaput.

Art Attack mused on some of the documents written during an era loosely defined between 1867 (when the machine took off commercially) and 1980-ish (when the word processor began to usurp the once gold standard for putting words to the page). The result is our top five books written during the era, even if it was sculpted in shorthand as a big whatevs to typewriter technology.

5. The Trial/Der Process by Franz Kafka

Posthumously published a year after the German shut-in's death, this 1925 dystopian fiction document owes a tip of the cap to Max Brod, who put the finishing touches on the incomplete manuscript.

4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (aka Victoria Lucas)

The 1963 novel, which is more or less a memoir, would not be published under Plath's real name until after her 1967 death.

3. Animal Farm by George Orwell

This 1945 book is perhaps the most ridiculous (in a good way) effort for the absurdist fictionist.

2. Another Country by James Baldwin

One of the greatest contemporary writers followed Go Tell It on the Mountain with this taboo-tackling tale that hit bookshelves in 1962.

1. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The original 120-foot typewritten scroll for this 1957 beat-fiction tome tours the country.

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