How Authors Sign Books And Does It Say Something About Them?

As someone who has been collecting signed books by Indian authors, I have become rather intrigued by how our authors autograph or inscribe their books. In deepening and pursuing this collecting focus, I couldn’t help but notice that some of our authors had a pattern or style in the way they always signed or inscribed their books. Once I caught on to this, I began to look more carefully at all the signed and inscribed copies in my collection. I even began looking forward to the next signed book that would come my way to see if a pattern emerged, or a style was present. For instance, V.S. Naipaul signs above his printed name on the title page (while others more commonly sign below their names), Salman Rushdie on the blank front endpapers (than the half or full title page) Amartya Sen on the top right hand corner of the page and Sarnath Banerjee with a caricature doodle.

I love Arundhati Roy’s flowing, calligraphic signature! Amitav Ghosh signs with a flourish too. Pavan K Varma is probably one of the few English authors who signs in Hindi. I also discovered that some authors, William Darlrymple for instance, won’t sign pirated copies (and I suspect there are others who would gladly inscribe one with a flourish feeling it a compliment of sorts that pirate editions exist of their books!) Another interesting way authors sign is to inscribe a line that plays off the book title: when inscribing a copy of “Bookless in Baghdad” to me, Shashi Tharoor wrote “May you never remain bookless” and Kapil Sibal once inscribed a line to rhyme with the title. Kiran Bedi likes to sign off with ‘Blessings’ and Abdul Kalam with ‘Greetings’.

Crossing out the printed name seems to be a recent common practice among many authors – I think this means the signed name is now a substitute for the printed one! This way the inscription becomes more personalized and individual. I recently wrote to Pico Iyer to ask about this. “I always try to write something, by way of individual message,” he wrote back, “and I have always crossed out the printed version of my name. And somehow, when I first began signing books, way back in 1988, I got in the habit of putting the name of the place where the signing took place and the month and year. Who knows why, but now I have the habit, I can’t break it!” Vikram Chandra writing to me said, “Oh, I generally just do the very boring, “With best wishes…” followed by a signature.”  

Talking about date formats, I’ve noticed that some of our authors have interesting ways of dating their books after they sign. Rana Dasgupta always writes the date in this format- 12/X1/15 – and I’ve always found the roman letter in between very charming! “How I sign,” said Suresh Menon, responding to my query, “depends on whom I sign it for. I always have a message – from ‘best wishes’ and ‘happy reading’ for people I don’t know very well to longer personal messages to those I do. Once I wrote, “Hope you buy my other books too”, but that was to a friend! I always sign on the author page, sometimes canceling the printed name. I write the date, and often the venue too. Gosh, you’ve made me think of stuff I hadn’t paid much attention to.”

One of the more fascinating things about authors signing books is the kind of pen they use – or in some cases pencil. There is a tradition in the West of deliberately signing in pencil: many authors, poets and fine press printers think this is a more elegant and individual way of signing books. But for Indian authors, however, signing in pencil would be unthinkable, and they would do it only if a pen wasn’t available at the time! Arun Shourie told me, “I prefer the pen to have black ink.”  And Anita Nair said, “I strike out the printed name and usually use a fountain pen to sign. I discover that I make spellos when I sign with anything else.”

Of the two copies of the autobiography of Milkha Singh I have, one is signed by Singh and the other by Farhan Akhtar, who played his part on screen. (I should say here that Milkha’s autograph is one of the most unique…there is no way that anyone can ever guess from the signature that is his!). Around the time I was doing a book tour for my (co-authored) book Gifted: Inspiring Stories of People with Disabilities, I would inscribe each copy with “You are Gifted.” I found myself writing that not only because the title leant itself to this pun, but also because I wanted each reader to think of themselves, like the people in the book, as being really gifted.

Is this pursuit for signed copies mere autograph hunting, a kind of literary stalking? While I do it for the pleasure and the thrill it gives me to get the book I admire signed by its author, book scholars and bibliographers in the West have been looking at inscribed copies of books as an exciting new source to learn more about the sensibility, mind and life of an author. I feel a deep if not a complete collection (and not just mine, but that of any collector) of signed and inscribed copies by Indian authors can one day, similarly, be a useful, revealing and charming insight into our literary heroes and their connection with us, their readers.