John Steinbeck drafted 'East of Eden' by hand, writing the novel's text on the right-hand pages of a journal and letters to his editor on the left.

Wolfe pitched a story about custom-made cars to Esquire with a satirical angle. While struggling to actually put the piece together, he explained to the editor what he wanted it to be. The editor published the letter as is, removing the greeting. The seminal article became a book of essays.

Before international fame and the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ernest Hemingway toiled under the harsh rule of the assistant managing editor at the Toronto Daily Star. Learn about the American writer’s difficult early career as a features writer with a job so demanding he had to miss the birth of his first son. However, thanks to that harsh boss, Hemingway asserted boundaries, left journalism, and began his legendary career writing fiction.

Steve Jobs apparently liked to email himself to save his thoughts. This archival email, written the year before he died, shows Jobs expressing gratitude and wonder for the world and its creative people.

The influential writer enjoyed cooking for large groups, which included novelists Philip Roth, Edna O'Brien, and Nora Ephron.

The writer's physical limitations (including partial blindness and balance issues) prohibited him from serving on the front lines. Instead, he worked as a military meteorologist. The job was not very demanding, so he spent most of his time writing. He told Simone de Beauvoir it was "extremely peaceful work; indeed I cannot think of any branch of the services that has a quieter, more poetic job."

The unpublished "The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing" was found in the belongings of Paul Castellano, who was murdered in 1985. It's unclear why Castellano had it, though an heir says it was originally in the collection of a "noted San Francisco-based poet...who received it directly from the author."

Stephen King is known first and foremost as a horror writer. However, one of his best-known books happens to be nonfiction. “On Writing,” published in 2000, is part autobiography and part instruction manual. King explains how he came to his craft and offers advice on ways aspiring writers can improve.

The two writers, who would later be considered two of the biggest names associated with existentialism, wrote positive reviews of each others' early work, with Camus praising Sartre's novel "Nausea" and story collection "The Wall" and, later, Sartre favorably compared Camus' "The Stranger" to Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway. Still, their reviews included some critiques, hinting at the larger disagreements that would come much later.

The first editors of Dickinson's posthumous collection of poetry heavily amended her work, making her private letters and drafts more valuable for what many perceive to be her more raw, unadulterated voice. Cristanne Miller, the editor of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson," discusses their importance and why so many of them were destroyed after Dickinson's death.

The author began writing professionally in his teens, first as a court reporter, then for many papers, penning op-eds, criticism, and other miscellany. While Dickens is often discussed as a novelist, he has a massive corpus of works situated in reality.

In this retrospective, Talese reflects on the making of the legendary article that pioneered a new literary style. He offers his critiques of the modern state of profiles, arguing the industry no longer produces compelling work.

Michael J. Arlen wrote a critique of the then-fashionable and popular form for The Atlantic in 1972, warning about the risk of emphasizing a writer’s perspective over facts. While Arlen applauded the innovation of the style, he believed focusing on voice and perspective could be irresponsible.

When O’Connor’s private letters were released in “The Habit of Being,” readers wondered about the identity of “A,” who had an intimate (possibly romantic) relationship with the writer. Decades later, “A” was revealed to be Betty Hester, a reclusive file clerk. Scholars still debate whether the two were romantically involved.

Within the pages are calculations, sketches and his first attempts at deriving what would be the field equations for gravity. It also documents some dead ends and the difficulties Einstein encountered as he describes part of the mathematics of what would become general relativity, describing it as "too involved."

Henry David Thoreau began writing the book about his time living at Walden Pond in 1846, but it went through seven iterations before being published in 1854. You can look through scans of early proofs, including some of Thoreau's handwritten corrections, through the Huntington Digital Library.

The superstar paid $12.1M for the original draft of Kerouac's novel, which was written on a 120-foot typescript scroll so the text could be read without stopping. Bryan recently purchased a church in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, with plans to turn it into the Jack Kerouac Center. The scroll will likely be housed there.

Since Talese began working at the New York Times in the 1950s, he has woven eccentric details into his stories about the people he covers. His immersive journalistic methods, such as living in a nudist colony, sparked controversy, but also helped him uncover aspects of people's lives.

“The Father of Existentialism” published over 40 texts and 40 articles during his life and used several pen names throughout them. The pseudonyms allowed him to present relevant opinions in a relatable, first-person manner without the reader believing that Søren Kierkegaard earnestly held them.

After numerous rejections from Sinatra, Esquire, and writer Gay Talese continued to pursue the profile, gathering information from observing Sinatra and interviewing friends and fans of his. Readers (and future writers) admired the way Talese captured the many layers of Sinatra’s personality from his generosity to his short temper.

The Beats were alike in their willingness to experiment and transgress, though the movement’s writers were distinct artists with varying styles. This collection showcases the breadth of the Beat Generation’s work, with authorized texts from Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Richard Brautigan and others.

- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in "Orlando: A Biography"

The review of "The Beautiful and the Damned" might have been comedic, but it was also illuminating, allowing Zelda to acknowledge her husband's tendency to use material from her diaries in his fiction and interrogate the way female characters were often portrayed in novels written by men.

Beat writer Jack Kerouac believed literature should aim to be more like jazz, using improvisation to burrow down to the root of the subconscious. In this video from the University of Pennsylvania’s Modern and Contemporary Poetry course, Professor Al Filreis directs a conversation of Kerouac’s manifesto, “Essential of Spontaneous Prose.”

Jon Landau reviewed a Springsteen show, then became his managerJon Landau, a writer for a Boston newspaper, saw Springsteen and his recently-named E Street Band perform in 1974 and wrote, "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen." He would go on to coproduce "Born to Run" and work as Springsteen's manager for decades.