He eschewed computers, often writing by fountain pen in his beloved notebooks.“Keyboards have always intimidated me,” he told The Paris Review in 2003.“A pen is a much more primitive instrument,” he said. “You feel that the words are coming out of your body, and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.”He would then turn to his vintage Olympia typewriter to type his handwritten manuscripts. He immortalized the trusty machine in his 2002 book “The Story of My Typewriter,” with illustrations by the painter Sam Messer.

Harry RansomCenter at the University of Texas, which houses Sexton’sletters and memorabilia. And her typewriter.

David McCullough, the noted histo-rian and Pulitzer Prize winner, haswritten everything he’s ever publishedsince 1965 on his sixty-nine-year-oldRoyal KMM standard desktop.

TomWolfe still uses his 1966 Underwood.

Pearl S. Buck and the 1930s RoyalStandard (with white keys) she used towrite The Good Earth, Jack Kerouac’sroad-weary Underwood Standard S,George Orwell’s Remington No. 2,Patricia Highsmith’s Olympia, Marga-ret Mitchell’s Remington No. 3 (whichher husband bought secondhand andshe relied on to type Gone With theWind and countless pieces of corre-spondence with fans).

I have my work cut out for me withHemingway, since he used many type-writers: a gigantic Royal No. 10 desk-top with glass side panels from his earlyKey West days, an Underwood Noise-less that helped him fi nish For Whomthe Bell Tolls and fi le dispatches fromhotel rooms while he was a World WarII correspondent, and black matte Roy-als from the early 1940s—especiallythe Quiet DeLuxe and Arrow—he fa-vored while at Finca Vigía in Cuba.

Deluxe Noiseless on display at MarjorieK innan Rawlings’s screened frontporch at Cross Creek, Florida; Flan-nery O’Connor’s 1930s Royal Stan-dard; Faulkner’s famed UnderwoodUniversal; Hemingway’s 1940 RoyalArrow; and the tiny, folding CoronaNo. 3 favored by both Ernie Pyle andIsak Dinesen.