As far as finding L'Esperance? That's where the trail goes cold. Credit: Screenshot: Amazonįor decades, the story ended there: A surprise software hit, its fans' runaway imaginations, and a largely accidental icon. Renee L'Esperance, the iconic Mavis Beacon of "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing," was later replaced by other models. Other models eventually replaced her on the packaging. L'Esperance, originally from Haiti, allegedly moved back to the Caribbean in the '90s to live a quiet life, according to a decades-old article (Opens in a new tab) in the Seattle Times. She was discovered while working as a salesperson at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills in the '80s and paid $500 for a one-time photoshoot, according to Abrams. Her identity is known and she has a name that rivals Mavis Beacon's in memorability and grandeur: Renée L'Esperance.
There was a real Mavis, sort of: the real-life model (Opens in a new tab) for the cover of the software. Which is where the second twist comes in. To this day, former students who learn their beloved typing coach was no more real than Betty Crocker (Opens in a new tab) still routinely face the dizzying (Opens in a new tab) jolt that accompanies losing a childhood hero. "I mean, there's no reason that you wouldn't." I'm pretty sure my dad did too," Alex Handy, the founder of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (Opens in a new tab), says. (Opens in a new tab) Or maybe she ran a school?Īs one Philadelphia man put it (Opens in a new tab), back in the '90s: "There really is no Mavis? I can't believe it." Some swore they'd seen her at typing competitions. For some, a kind of shared false memory, or Mandela Effect, took hold (Opens in a new tab). That ambiguity was enough for devotees of the game to build a mystique around the woman they thought was teaching them how to clank quickly and accurately away on their keyboards. "We just said that she was our symbol of excellence, and that became more of a marketing slogan," Joe Abrams, who ran Software Toolworks with Walt Bilofsky at the time, explains. (It was later acquired (Opens in a new tab) by Pearson, the educational media behemoth.) Many over the decades came to believe in her as a living, breathing teacher and the folks at Software Toolworks didn't try too hard to clarify that wasn't so. "Mavis" was simply the image on the cover of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, a software program developed by Software Toolworks in the 1980s. Randomly thought of Mavis Beacon and how much I appreciate her for teaching me how to type ✨ /2yj9LKFgGU (Opens in a new tab)- Bev Gooden ✨ (Opens in a new tab)
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