[Editor’s note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we’ll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 30, 2011.] There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of one of your favorite authors at work – even a photo of the epic event can send an anxious thrill down your spine, as if you might be able to see some hint of literary genius in posture or setting, in attire or facial expression. And it’s even better if they’re working on a typewriter. After all, there’s something impossibly gorgeous about a typewriter – maybe it’s the vintage charm, maybe it’s the physicality the noisy machine lends to the writing process, but people (and you can count us among them) go mad for typewriters, especially if they’ve been used by someone famous. Inspired by LIFE’s “In Praise of the Typewriter” photo gallery, we decided to compile all our favorite authors-at-work-on-typewriters photographs for your viewing pleasure, so click through to indulge in a little vintage literary eye candy.

William Faulkner, 1943

Sylvia Plath

Ernest Hemingway, 1939

Leonard Cohen

Francoise Sagan, 1955

Agatha Christie, 1946

Marlon Brando, 1954 (okay, okay, we know he’s an actor, but look how dapper and be-catted he is)

Langston Hughes, 1945

George Orwell

William S. Burroughs, 1959

Alfred Hitchcock, 1939

Charles Bukowski, 1988

John Cheever, 1979

James Jones, 1950

Bob Dylan

Tennessee Williams, 1946

Dorothy Parker, 1937

Saul Bellow

Faulkner again. Just because.