Manuscript or document written in the author's handwriting
An autograph or holograph is a manuscript or document written in its author's or composer's hand. The meaning of "autograph" as a document penned entirely by the author of its content (as opposed to a typeset document or one written by a copyist or scribe other than the author) overlaps with that of "holograph". 
Autograph manuscripts are studied by scholars (such as historians and paleographers), and can become collectable objects. Holographic documents have, in some jurisdictions, a specific legal standing.
Related terms include archetype (the hypothesised form of an autograph), and protograph (the common ancestor of two closely-related witnesses which ultimately descended from the same autograph). For example, the Novgorodsko-Sofiysky Svod is the hypothetical protograph of the "Novgorod Fourth Chronicle" (NPL) and "Sofia First Chronicle", both of which are extant textual witnesses of the lost archetype, the "Primary Chronicle" (PVL). A "paradosis" is a proposed best-reading, postulated when attempting to reconstruct the autograph.
Terminology.
According to "The Oxford English Minidictionary", an autograph is, apart from its meaning as a signature, a "manuscript in the author's handwriting," while a holograph is a "(document) written wholly in the handwriting of the person in whose name it appears."
In the 1911 edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica", Edward Maunde Thompson gives two common meanings of the word autograph as it applies to documents: "a document signed by the person from whom it emanates" and "one written entirely in the hand of such a person", noting that the latter is "more technically described as a holograph".
In "Webster's Third New International Dictionary", the definitions are:
;1autograph 
 1: something that is written with one's own hand: a: an original handwritten manuscript (as of an author's or composer's work) ⟨valuable old ~"s" of Dickens⟩ [p. 147]
;1holograph 
 : a document (as a letter, deed, or will) wholly in the handwriting of the person from whom it proceeds and whose act it purports to be [p. 1081]
According to Stanley Boorman in "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians":
;Holograph 
 A document written in the hand of the author or composer. This distinguishes it from the more commonly used word, Autograph, for the latter, strictly, means merely that the document is written by someone who can be named.
Boorman describes the manuscripts handwritten by a composer as including holographs (copies of their own work) and autographs (copies of the works of other composers). He notes that this distinction is rarely made by "antiquarian dealers or auctioneers", but says that scribes and copyists often included other composers and so identifying them and their autographs can be useful for people studying their works.
According to Yō Tomita, writing in "The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach", "autograph" and "holograph" can be considered synonyms (i.e., a manuscript for which the writer is the author of the work), the former term being generally preferred in studies of manuscripts. Further, he writes that Bach's copies of compositions by other composers "should never be referred to as Bach's autographs, even if they are entirely in Bach's handwriting." He distinguishes two types of partial autographs: the first being written by a set of scribes, including the composer, the second being a copy made by a scribe other than the composer, to which the composer, in a later stage, applied editorial corrections and/or other modifications. According to Tomita, manuscripts of straightforward transcriptions should be referred to as "copy" or "transcription manuscript", while more convoluted arrangements should be referred to as an "autograph" rather than a "copy". In Bach scholarship, "original manuscript" refers to a score or performance parts written (by himself or his scribes) for the composer's own use.
In what follows the terms "autograph" and "holograph" are used as quoted in the sources indicated by the footnoted references. When these sources only use a description, such as "in the author's handwriting" or "written in the hand of the author", then, following "Webster's", "autograph" is used for a "manuscript (as of an author's or composer's work)" and "holograph" for a "document (as a letter, deed, or will)", and either of these terms only when the explicitly named scribe of the manuscript or document is also the creator of its content. For instance:
Autograph letters which are not in the handwriting of the person from whom they emanate, and perhaps only bear the signature of their author, such as in the Vatican usage of the term, are not further considered in this article about autograph manuscripts.
Text.
Autograph text, with or without drawn illustrations, or calculations, remains from many authors, from different eras, including:
Music.
Musical autographs exist in various stages of completion:
Intermediate stages are possible, for instance Wagner's method of composition entailed several sketch and draft stages, and a first stage of the complete score () before the fair copy. Other composers used fewer steps: for his cantatas, Bach apparently often started directly with the composing score (with some sketches and drafts written in that score while composing), without, in the end, always transferring such score to a fair copy. Sometimes, however, he started with the transcription of an earlier work, which developed in a revision score, before being transferred to a fair copy. Or otherwise, a revision manuscript could be turned into performance material for a rewritten work: D-B Mus.ms. Bach St 112 VI, Fascicle 1, a partially autograph bundle of performance parts for the last cantata of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio", contains four parts which are revision versions originally written for an otherwise undocumented cantata (BWV 248 VI a).
Sometimes a composer's autograph starts as a fair copy, continuing as a draft. For example, the Fantasia in the late 1730s autograph of Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 906, is a fair copy, but halfway through the (likely incomplete) Fugue the manuscript gradually shifts to a draft with several corrections.
Scholarship.
Scholarly studies of autographs can help in establishing authenticity or date of origin of a composition. Autographs, and fair copies produced with the assistance of scribes, can also be studied to detect a composer's true intentions. For instance, John Tyrrell argued that Janáček's autograph score of his last opera was less authoritative as the final state of that opera than the fair copy by the composer's scribes, produced under his direction and with his corrections.
As collectable object.
Bach's autograph compositions are rarely available for private collectors: the bulk of his hundreds of extant autographs resides at the Berlin State Library, while only a fourth of 40 complete autograph manuscripts outside that collection are privately owned. One of such exceptional autographs, that came up for auction in 2016, fetched over £2.5m.
Ludwig van Beethoven's autographs have, since a few months after the composer's death in 1827, been sold for considerable prices at auctions. Beethoven's autograph of the "Große Fuge" (version for four hands) sold for £1.1m at Sotheby's in 2005. In November 2016 the autograph score of a Mahler symphony sold for £4,546,250: no autograph symphony had ever sold for a higher price.
Holographic documents.
A holograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears. Some countries (e.g. France) or local jurisdictions within certain countries (e.g. some U.S. states) give legal standing to specific types of holographic documents, generally waiving requirements that they be witnessed. One of the most important types of such documents are holographic last wills.
In fiction, "The Ardua Hall Holograph", handwritten by Aunt Lydia, plays a central role in Margaret Atwood's novel, "The Testaments" (2019).