The author's inscription, from courtesy to relic

A few words in ink can change the nature of a copy.

“À Monsieur X, hommage de l’auteur” — the formula may seem almost insignificant. But when the recipient turns out to be the publisher who brought the book into print, the writer to whom its author owed his vocation, his literary rival, or the person who inspired one of its characters, these few words draw the copy into another story altogether.

This is the whole interest of the author's inscription. It is not enough for a book to bear a handwritten inscription to become valuable. What matters is the relationship it embodies between a book, its author, and the person to whom it was given.

And this relationship can range from mere social courtesy to a genuine document of literary history.

Inscription, dedication, signature: what exactly are we talking about?

In everyday language, people readily speak of a “signed book.” The vocabulary of book collecting deserves to be a little more precise.

A dedication, in the strict sense, belongs to the work itself. Printed at the head of the book, it names the person to whom the author chose to dedicate the text: a patron, a friend, a mentor, sometimes a relative. It is often found at the beginning of early books.

The autograph inscription, by contrast, belongs to the copy. It is a handwritten note added by the author to a particular copy of his book, generally addressed to a recipient. It may be signed, initialled, or occasionally left unsigned, when the handwriting and context are enough to establish its authorship.

A book bearing only the writer's signature is, more simply, a signed copy. It does not necessarily carry an inscription.

The distinction may seem slight; it is nonetheless fundamental. The dedication concerns the text. The inscription concerns the history of a copy.

Giving a book: a practice far older than the nineteenth century

The autograph inscription is often associated with the writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Hugo presenting his works to fellow writers, the Symbolist poets exchanging their collections, or the authors of the NRF sending their new books to critics and friends.

But the gift of a book is a far older practice.

Even before printing, manuscripts could be produced expressly to be presented to a sovereign, a prince or a patron. With the rise of the printed book, this tradition continued: certain copies were specially printed on a precious support, illuminated, bound in the arms of their recipient, or prepared to be solemnly presented to him.

Bibliography has thus traditionally distinguished the dedication copy, intended for the person to whom the work itself is dedicated, from the presentation copy, given by its author or publisher to someone else.

The autograph inscription is one of the forms this gift may take, but it is not the only one.

It was above all in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that these handwritten inscriptions became familiar to the collector of modern literature. The growth of publishing, the press and literary reviews multiplied exchanges of books between writers, journalists, critics, publishers and artists. The book then circulated within a network of which the inscription sometimes preserves the trace.

The inscription as a social gesture

An author does not give his books only to his friends.

He sends them to a fellow writer he admires, to his spouse, to a critic from whom he hopes for a review, to the editor of a journal, to a publisher, to an academician, to a patron, or to a public figure he wishes to approach.

Review copies often preserve the trace of this practice. The author or publisher sends the new book to those who can comment on it and bring it to public attention. A wholly conventional inscription may thus belong to a perfectly calculated strategy for the circulation of the work.

This is why the formulas themselves should be treated with caution.

“Avec mon respectueux hommage” may seem less appealing than a long declaration of friendship. Yet, addressed to the critic who has just devoted a decisive article to the author, this conventional tribute immediately takes on another meaning.

The first question to ask when faced with an inscription is therefore not: “What does it say?”

It is: “Whom is it addressed to?”

The recipient: the key to the inscription

Identifying the recipient is often the real bibliographical work.

A perfectly legible name is not always enough. Several contemporaries might share the same surname; the author may use only a first name, initials, a nickname, or a familiar form of address. Worse still, the name may have been erased — the former owner unwilling to let the world know that he could no longer afford to keep his precious books.

The relationship must then be reconstructed.

Does the recipient appear in the author's correspondence? Did he work for the same journal? Was he his publisher, his doctor, his translator, his illustrator? Did the two men meet at that time? Does the inscription correspond to a particular event?

It is sometimes a painstaking, lengthy and laborious inquiry.

But it can entirely change the significance of a copy.

A book addressed to “Marcel” does not carry the same weight depending on whether Marcel remains impossible to identify or turns out to be Marcel Proust.

From a polite inscription to a significant one

Not all inscriptions, then, are equal.

The most common are courtesy inscriptions: “hommage de l’auteur,” “cordial souvenir,” “avec toute ma sympathie.” They attest to the circulation of the book and add an interesting provenance, but their importance depends essentially on the recipient and on the rarity of the author's autographs.

More interesting are inscriptions that document a relationship: to a friend, a fellow writer, a publisher, a mentor or a collaborator. A few words can sometimes reveal a closeness that the formula alone would not suggest.

Rarer and even more valued are inscriptions that comment on the book itself: an allusion to its genesis, thanks for help given in its writing, a reference to a character, a correction, a quotation, a private joke, or the evocation of a well-known episode in the author's life.

The copy then ceases to be merely a book bearing an autograph. It becomes a source.

What is an association copy?

It is one of the most prestigious terms in book-collecting catalogues (used chiefly in the Anglo-Saxon world), and one of the most easily misused.

An association copy is a copy whose provenance establishes a particularly significant link with the author, with someone in his circle, or with the very content of the work.

The autograph inscription is often the best demonstration of this relationship, but it is not indispensable.

A writer's own working copy, extensively annotated in his hand, is obviously an association copy even if it bears no inscription.

The same may be true of a book from the library of a person essential to the author, or of a figure intimately connected with its subject, provided that this provenance is established.

Conversely, not every book bearing an inscription is a significant association copy.

A copy given by an author to a person with whom no particular connection is known remains a perfectly respectable presentation copy; it simply does not carry the same associative force as a book addressed to his publisher, his closest friend, or the person to whom the work owes part of its existence.

Is an inscription contemporary with publication preferable?

Often, yes, but not always (and beware of posthumous inscriptions — a joke I share with a fellow bookseller, who will recognise himself).

An inscription written at the time of publication captures the book at the very moment it begins to circulate. On a first edition, addressed to someone important to the genesis or the reception of the work, this chronological proximity can be especially sought after.

A date falling a few days before or after publication may even make it possible to trace the book's earliest movements.

But it would be dangerous to make this an absolute rule.

An inscription written thirty years later can be far more revealing if the author looks back on his work, gives it to a decisive figure, or adds a remark that retrospectively sheds light on the text.

Likewise, an exceptional inscription on a later edition may be of greater interest than a banal tribute inscribed on the first edition.

In book collecting, context often matters more than the formula.

How should an inscription be examined?

The examination naturally begins with the inscription itself: the handwriting, the signature, any date, and the identity of the recipient.

But the scope must then be broadened.

Is the copy a first edition? A large-paper copy? A review copy? Is the inscription contemporary with publication, or much later? Does the book contain other annotations? Is there an ex-libris, an accompanying letter, a sale catalogue, or any other document that helps establish its provenance?

The location of the inscription can also be noted (endpaper, half-title, title page, wrapper), though this alone does not establish any hierarchy of value.

The real question always remains the same: what story does this copy allow us to tell?

And authenticity?

An inscription is obviously of interest only if it is genuine.

Caution is all the more necessary because the presence of an autograph can substantially alter the value of a book.

A genuine handwritten inscription must be distinguished from a facsimile-reproduced signature (very common in the nineteenth century), the handwriting compared with authenticated autographs, its evolution over the author's lifetime taken into account, and, whenever possible, the provenance of the copy examined.

Some authors signed a great deal; others very little. Some signatures are simple and easy to imitate. Some secretaries may also have inscribed or addressed books on a writer's behalf.

An old, well-documented provenance is then especially valuable.

When the inscription becomes a document

The finest inscribed copies are those in which the history of the text meets that of its readers.

A book addressed to a critic who shaped its reception, to a writer who influenced its author, to a painter who illustrated it, to a publisher who took the risk of publishing it, or to a loved one hidden behind one of its characters, is no longer merely a signed copy.

It embodies a relationship.

It is only then that the image of the “relic” takes on its full meaning. Not because the author touched the book or left a few lines of ink in it, but because this particular copy preserves the trace of an episode in the history of the work.

The best way to read an inscription, then, is not to count its lines.

It is to discover the story that lies between them.