Gli studi grafologici di Cesare Lombroso : usi scientifici e destinazione editoriale della collezione di autografi dei devianti del Museo di Antropologia Criminale di Torino

During the second half of the Nineteenth Century, Cesare Lombroso amasses a large collection of objects inside of what would become the Museum of Criminal anthropology of the University of Turin, including autograph letters and documents of the so-called deviants, subjects who transcend the concept of norm. The scientist considers the written samples as evidence to confirm his theories and publishes them inside his 1895 book Grafologia. Graphology is an emerging discipline at the time, that struggles to be recognised as true science. The theoretical assumptions about it in Lombroso’s work are, however, not his own: he borrows them from the French graphologist Jules Crépieux-Jamin. As a result, the latter will file a lawsuit for plagiarism against Lombroso and his publisher Ulrico Hoepli: not yet addressed by historiography, the episode is reconstructed for the first time examining the unpublished correspondence of the scientist