Mending the Master’s Machine

Author Mark Coggins recently explained on this page how he had acquired Raymond Chandler’s last typewriter, a very elegant Olivetti. More recently, on his own Web site, he posted more information about that machine, including these two interesting tidbits:

Raymond Chandler, one of the progenitors of American hard-boiled detective novel, wrote on an Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter from cerca 1955 until his death in 1959, a period that included composition of his last published novel, Playback (1958), the last Philip Marlowe short story, titled variously, “Marlowe Takes On the Syndicate”, “Wrong Pigeon”, “Philip Marlowe’s Last Case” or “The Pencil” (1959), and the first few pages of an unfinished novel with the working title The Poodle Springs Story, later completed by Robert B. Parker as Poodle Springs at the request of the Chandler estate in 1989. …

The machine owned by Chandler—a Series I—was most likely purchased in the UK, most likely in 1955. I base my conclusion for the year and country of purchase on the fact that Chandler made a trip there in 1955 after his wife Cissy passed, and the fact that there is a key on the machine for the UK pound symbol. There is also a key for the dollar sign, but it is not in the usual place above the number 4. In any case, the machine could not have been purchased earlier than 1953 because its serial number, 788236, is in the range of machines that were manufactured that year.

You can enjoy Mark’s entire post here.