The custom of giving a copy of a book inscribed with a few words is as old as the printed book itself, but it was in the nineteenth century that it became a codified literary practice: the author received copies from his publisher which he distributed to family and friends, to fellow writers, to critics, and the inscription, written in ink on the half-title, bore the recipient's name, sometimes a formula, a date, a signature. The inscriptions of Hugo, Baudelaire, Proust or Céline are today studied in their own right, as fragments of correspondence.
The Anglo-Saxon tradition subdivides what French groups under a single term. It speaks of presentation copy for an ordinary inscription, addressed to a relative, a colleague, a reader, and of association copy when the recipient has a meaningful connection with the author or the work: a dedicatee, a model, a mentor, a rival, a figure whose name illuminates the book as much as the book illuminates them. The boundary is not fixed; it depends on what the recipient represents and is judged copy by copy. It is the quality of this connection, more than the mere presence of an inscription, that gives value to an inscribed copy.
Authentication compares the handwriting, the ink and the wording with known inscriptions by the author, and verifies that the inscription is contemporary with the book: an inscription dated twenty years after publication says something quite different from one written on the day of publication. The most common sources of confusion are inscription leaves taken from another copy, inscriptions washed out and rewritten, 'dedications' printed in facsimile in certain editions, and bare signatures presented as inscriptions. An anonymous inscription, or one to an unidentified recipient, may be described, but should not be overstated.
