Work in Hand: Script, Print, and Writing, 1690-1840

Work in Hand: Script, Print and Writing, 1690-1840 is about the relationship between manual writing and print. Handwriting, and how it is seen and understood, changes a lot during this period, as can be seen in printed engravings of handwriting, in the form of copy-books, and engraved autographs. It is now that English round hand, the ancestor of modern handwriting, develops. The idea that the labouring classes should not have access to writing also loses ground, and a universal ability to write slowly becomes acceptable. There is a new interest in the ‘author’s hand’, the handwriting of novelists and poets, part of a more general cult of the autograph. By the end of the period handwriting becomes associated with being human.