Manuscript Page of Dostoevsky’s Demons (With Doodles)

Dostoyevsky_The_Demons_Manuscript

Walt Whitman’s Handwritten Drafts of “Come, said my Soul”

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(Via/about).

Illustrated Borges Manuscript

borges

(Via).

Illustrated Manuscript Page from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

tolkien manuscript

Manuscript Fragment from James Joyce’s Ulysses

joyce_ulysses-p2

(Via/about/zoom in!).

Handwritten Manuscript Page for Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths”

borges manuscript

(Via).

Handwritten Manuscript Page from Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson

twain_ma881-882

(Via/about).

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Handwritten Manuscript for the First Page of Gatsby

gatsby manuscript

(Via/more).

Robert Frost’s Handwritten Manuscript for “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

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Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Document via the Library of Congress.

T.S. Eliot’s Handwritten Manuscript for “Virginia”

virginia_eliot

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river.

 

(Via).

George Washington’s Rules of Civility

(Non-manuscript, more legible version).

George Washington’s Rules of Civility

(Non-manuscript, more legible version).

“Rhetoric” — A Page from James Joyce’s Notebooks

This page is from a notebook that contains some of Joyce’s preparatory notes for Ulysses—there are notes for characters (“Stephen,” “Simon,” “Leopold,” etc.) as well as lists (“Books,” “Recipes”) and general ideas (“Theosophy”). This particular page, “Rhetoric,” seems to be part of the material that went into the “Aeolus” chapter of Ulysses, which plays with the windiness of rhetorical figures. From the National Library of Ireland, via UbuWeb.

Letter and Corrected Reprint of Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain” with Comments by Author

(Via/more).