“Le ordinarono in serie a proprio ed altrui vantaggio” : collections of autographs and archival science

The purpose of this article is to reflect on production, organization and tradition of autograph collections since the beginning until the end of the nineteenth century. In particulary, these collections, considered by the classical archival science only such one of the principle causes of destruction of the archives and as the result of the collectors' craze that pervaded Europe in that turn of years, were used as a kind of archives, where historians could find all sorts of records, performing a para-archivistical function in absence of the availability of public archives, also influencing the methods of the archival arrangement. [Publisher's text]