More than 7,500 leaves of Handel's musical autographs survive today, as testimony to a creative career in Germany, Italy, and London that spanned the first half of the eighteenth century. Most of the autographs are now in two major collections: the Royal Music Library collection at the British Library, and the Founder's Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The remainder are dispersed through collections in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the USA.

This catalogue presents a survey of the complete corpus of Handel's surviving autographs. Musical works and movements to be found in autograph are identified by reference to standard collected editions and the thematic catalogue of Handel's works (HWV) published in Vols. I-III of the Handel-Handbuch.

The catalogue also records information about the paper characteristics (watermarks and stave-rulings) of each autograph leaf. Watermarks have been classified, and each type is illustrated with a full-size diagram. The information given in the catalogue is an essential guide to the study of Handel's autographs, and will be of particular assistance to researchers working from microfilm.

The overall view of Handel's manuscript papers also enables dates to be assigned to undated autographs on the basis of their paper characteristics; furthermore, the information on eighteenth-century manuscript paper is relevant to secondary copies of Handel's works, and to the surviving music from other contemporary composers working in Italy and England.

While the authors have drawn on the experience of previous Handel scholars, and on paper studies relating to the music of J. S. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven, this catalogue is the first systematic survey of a body of autographs of this size and complexity to be published.