‘PLEASE MAY I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH?’
What exactly is an autograph? A duke once wrote in a very persistent boy’s autograph book:

‘You are a nuisance.’

If you had asked Charles II’s mistress Nell Gwynn for her autograph, she would have written:

‘E. G.’

because those were her initials (for Eleanor Gwynn), and she didn’t know how to write anything else.

Napoleon Bonaparte often signed himself simply:

‘N.’

He was a very busy man and had a lot of documents to sign.

All these are autographs. An autograph is literally anything written in a person’s own handwriting. The word comes from the Greek autos meaning ‘self’ and graphos meaning ‘writing’: self-writing. Usually it will be a signature, but it may also be a postcard, a letter, a signed cheque, a verse from a poem – anything, so long as it is handwritten. The wonderful thing about a piece of handwriting is that it is always unique: even if two copies are made with identical words, they are never exactly the same.

HOW IT ALL STARTED
People have been collecting autographs for hundreds of years. In the 16th century educated men and women carried around albums in which they asked friends to write their signatures, add an illuminating motto or phrase or even paint a picture. These volumes, sometimes filled with beautiful watercolours, were called alba amicorum, or albums of friends. The idea of encouraging people to make comments became popular again at the end of the 19th century. In so-called books of questions, eminent people were asked to name their favourite poets, painters or composers, record their pet likes and dislikes or to explain their ideas of pleasure or pain.