Pamela Porter: Autographs and the art of friendship: Are manuscripts just for scholars?

`Autographs’, namely those manuscripts in which the identity of the writer is of paramount importance and may well eclipse the document’s value as a historical resource, have long been the subject of widespread fascination Following some explanatory comments on the history of autographs and their universal appeal, the paper focuses on an outstanding but relatively little-known collection of almost 500 early alba amicorum (friendship books) in the British Library.

Dating chiefly from the 17th and 18th centuries, these diminutive volumes owe their existence to a passing fashion for students at European universities to collect autographs from their friends and acquaintances in the form of written and pictorial remembrances. Somewhat limited in their usefulness for wider historical research, these little books are nevertheless of considerable significance in their vivid recreation of an everyday world that might otherwise have escaped such detailed documentation.