pen-labor

Updated: June 27, 2025

I do not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labor, following upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2.

What he told me of his way of composing confirms me in my criticism on his style.-He did not dash his pen on paper, like Walter Scott, and write off twenty pages without stop- ping, but, dictating to an amanuensis, a plan which leaves the brain to work undisturbed by the pen-labor, dictating from his chair, and often from his bed, he gave out sentence by sentence, slowly, as they were moulded in his mind.

Orville Dewey - Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D.: Edited by his Daughter

I do not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labor, following upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete