George Giss­ing, New Grub Street:

A few days ago her star­tled eye had caught an adver­tise­ment in the news­pa­per, headed ‘Literary Machine’; had it then been invented at last, some automa­ton to supply the place of such poor crea­tures of her­self, to turn out books and arti­cles? Alas! The machine was only one for hold­ing vol­umes con­ve­niently, that the work of lit­er­ary man­u­fac­ture might be phys­i­cally light­ened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automa­ton; the prob­lem must be com­par­a­tively such a simple one. Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, mod­ernised into a single one for today’s consumption.