Shakespeare wrote with a feather quill and ink; Emily Dickinson wrote with a fountain pen; Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on a Yiddish typewriter. But what did such writers do when they weren't writing' What did Jane Austen eat for breakfast' What could make Mark Twain throw his shirts out the window' Why would Zora Neale Hurston punch a fellow elevator passenger' Lives of the Writers tells all that and more.