Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Tennessee Williams’s 1936 Corona Junior, Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 Underwood Standard, Maya Angelou’s 1980 Adler Meteor 12 and John Lennon’s 1951 Imperial are among the timeless typewriters featured in a new, must-see exhibition on display Aug. 31-Sept. 24 at Mississippi State University’s Mitchell Memorial Library.
Free and open to the public, the “Famous Types” exhibition in the library’s third-floor John Grisham Room contains nine typewriters from Los Angeles civic leader Steve Soboroff’s renowned collection. For exhibition viewing hours, visit www.lib.msstate.edu/famoustypes.
Soboroff, a Los Angeles native and L.A. Dodger Stadium regular, got his start as a collector with the 1999 purchase of the glove worn by pitcher Sandy Koufax when he threw a no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants in 1963. To help put his children through college, Soboroff later decided to part with his prized possession and entered the glove into a New York auction in 2005. It was there that he set his sights on a Remington Model J typewriter owned by another of his heroes, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Jim Murray. Soboroff ultimately beat out the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the bidding for Murray’s typewriter, the first of more than 30 typewriters he has purchased over the past 13 years.
“These typewriters were the means by which their owners expressed their extraordinary imaginations and creativity,” said Soboroff, who currently serves as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. “By seeing these typewriters, a mechanism largely unknown to today’s students, visitors to the exhibition will be able to connect with the writers and in turn be inspired by their lives and works.”
In addition to Williams, Hemingway, Angelou and Lennon, featured typewriters at MSU have been previously owned by Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Tom Hanks, George Bernard Shaw and Gore Vidal.
Sarah McCullough, MSU Libraries coordinator of cultural heritage projects, said Mississippi State is grateful to Soboroff for sharing part of his fascinating collection with the university and The Southern Literary Trail, which is based at MSU Libraries. In addition to MSU, host institutions for the exhibition will include Georgia College and State University and the University of Alabama. For more, follow on Facebook @southernliterarytrail.
“Typewriters were very personal to writers, and to be able to see those that belonged to some of America’s greatest writers is a moving experience,” McCullough said. “To also see those that belonged to such cultural icons as John Lennon and Tom Hanks is a rare opportunity. Many thanks go to Mr. Soboroff for providing our students, faculty, community and many visitors to MSU with this extraordinary experience.”
Soboroff said it is a great opportunity to have this selection of typewriters from his collection exhibited at MSU and two other locations on The Southern Literary Trail. He added that it is particularly meaningful to have Tennessee Williams’s typewriter exhibited close to his birthplace in Columbus.
Learn more about MSU Libraries at www.lib.msstate.edu.
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