Lot 485
MacLEAN (ALISTAIR)
Alistair MacLean's IBM typewriter, used whilst living in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s; together with copies of correspondence providing provenance (small quantity), sold as an association item
26 June 2012, 10:30 BST
OxfordSold for £272.50 inc. premium
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MacLEAN (ALISTAIR)
Alistair MacLean's IBM golf-ball typewriter, used whilst living in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s; together with copies of correspondence providing provenance (small quantity), sold as an association item
Footnotes
The typewriter on which Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean (1922-1987) wrote his later works (Athabasca, River of Death, Partisans, etc.), during the last eight years of his life spent living alone in a rented villa just outside Dubrovnik. "He typed on a cross-legged table... [sitting] on a brown leather swivel-chair and pick out his words on the IBM golf-ball machine, the Times atlas to his right..." (Jack Webster, Alistair MacLean. A Life).
Provenance: sold by Bato Tomasavic, "a Belgrade publisher, who had the ear of ministers" (Webster), who had assisted Maclean during his time in Dubrovnik. He was gifted the typewriter by Maclean's landlord Avdo Cimic who "kept his [MacLean's] apartment as a shrine after his death" (ODNB).