British-Polish author Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is one of my favorite English-language writers and 'Heart of Darkness' (1899) is among my favorite pieces of fiction.
I was pleasently surprised to find out the novelist had a connection to the U.S.-made Corona 3 typewriter. According to a 2014 academic article, Conrad's secretary Lilian Mary Hallowes typed up the last few years of his work on a 1919 Corona 3. She bought the machine in mid-July of that year for 16 pounds and 6 shillings. [1] That was a hefty price tag, given that a skilled tradesman at that time would have needed about 49 days to earn that much money. [2] MODEL MIX-UP Conrad apparently commissioned Hallowes to buy the Corona after the previous typewriter, which she had used for 14 years, broke down. There are unfortunately no details about which model this previous typewriter was. The 2014 article goes on to argue that curators at the Canterbury Heritage Museum in the U.K. had incorrectly displayed a Corona 4 at an exhibition on Conrad, claiming it was the typewriter used by his secretary. The article's author, Alexandre Fachard, clearly knows his typewriters:
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