The Enchanted Typewriter
by John Kendrick Bangs 1862–1922
The book, and the century it came out of.
Boswell, deceased, dictates to a typewriter in New Jersey the doings of the Associated Shades — Hamlet, Shakespeare, Cassius, Xanthippe, Baron Munchausen — as they run a club, a newspaper and a lawsuit in the afterlife. Bangs edited Harper’s humour pages and invented the genre that bears his name; the joke is that eternity turns out to be exactly like Newark. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Birger, Vuillard and Hammershøi among them.
It is a strange fact, for which I do not expect ever satisfactorily to account, and which will receive little credence even among those who know that I am not given to romancing—it is a strange fact, I say, that the substance of the following pages has evolved itself during a period of six months, more or less,…
The Enchanted Typewriter, by John Kendrick Bangs, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Comedy & Satire
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 80 pages
- Reading time
- about 2 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785486532399
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Enchanted Typewriter, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Comedy & Satire shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486532399, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Enchanted Typewriter?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. John Kendrick Bangs's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 80 pages, which is roughly about 2 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
