Handwriting in America: A Cultural History

Copybooks and the Palmer method, handwriting analysis and autograph collecting—these words conjure up a lost world, in which people looked to handwriting as both a lesson in conformity and a talisman of individuality. In this engaging history, ranging from colonial times to the present, Tamara Plakins Thornton explores the shifting functions and meanings of handwriting in America.

Script emerged in the eighteenth century as a medium intimately associated with the self, says Thornton, in con...