Author-copies, also known as Handexemplare, are an author’s personal copy of a book he or she published, which were kept in their library and often inscribed by the author’s hand with addenda and corrigenda to the contents originally published within it, presumably for incorporation within an updated edition of the work. They are especially valuable when they preserve the readings of documents such as medieval manuscripts that have perished since the time of the author’s encounter with them. All that remains of such pre-modern, often unique evidence is what the author copied by hand within their own work as a note to him/herself.
Such volumes now reside in many different repositories – archives, libraries, private collections – but rarely are they noted in their catalogue descriptions as being the original author-copies. By writing to a large number of libraries and archives in Europe and the Americas to inquire about the existence of Handexemplare in their collections, I have identified ca. 350 such works, what is known of their provenance, under what shelfmark they are now catalogued, and to what extent their contents were modified by their authors.