An online signature gallery of some of the world's best known writers
I have a long-standing fascination with handwriting and typography. The shape of letters and the visual appearance of sentences can contribute just as much meaning to a reader as the words themselves; a fact that the advertising industry is quick to capitalize on.
Writers' signatures hold a particular grip on me, not least for the romantic idea that they bring us closer to the personality of the writers themselves. If we feel close to an author's work, there are times when the printed word can feel like a barrier between us and the original manuscript. A signature offers a stamp of the writer's character and humanity; and in this sense, a signed book can feel like a personal validation of the work.
I've compiled a number of autographs here that, for one reason or another, have caught my attention. Enjoy!
Samuel Beckett
Joyce Carol Oates
Paul Auster
Anthony Burgess
William S. Burroughs
Don DeLillo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
T. S. Eliot
William Faulkner
Robert Frost
Franz Kafka
Jack Kerouac
Harper Lee
Philip Roth
J. D. Salinger
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jacques Derrida
James Joyce
Susan Sontag
John Steinbeck
Thomas Mann
Leo Tolstoy
Oscar Wilde
Emile Zola
More
3 Comments:
Jack Kerouac's signature is the surprising one of the set: wouldn't have expected legibility from the man.
I thought Beckett's was unusually legible, given the other examples of his penmanship I'd seen . . . maybe he was having an off day . . .
The question is, are they autographs, or are they signatures. The "autograph" is often written in haste and begrudgingly so, especially when the author arrives at edition 99/100; the "signature" however, is written with care and engagement, for it is often being applied to something of central importance to the author. Are we looking at autographs, or signatures? Lewis Silvestri
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