Anthropodermic bibliopegy


Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin., The Anthropodermic Book Project has examined 31 out of 50 books in public institutions supposed to have anthropodermic bindings, of which 18 have been confirmed as human and 13 have been demonstrated to be animal leather instead.

Terminology

Bibliopegy is a rare synonym for bookbinding. It combines the Ancient Greek and πηγία. The earliest reference in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1876; Merriam-Webster gives the date of first use as circa 1859 and the OED records an instance of bibliopegist for a bookbinder from 1824.
The word anthropodermic, combining the Ancient Greek and , does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary and appears never to be used in contexts other than bookbinding. The phrase 'anthropodermic bibliopegy' has been used at least since Lawrence S. Thompson's article on the subject, published in 1946. The practice of binding a book in the skin of its author - as with The Highwayman, discussed below - has been called 'autoanthropodermic bibliopegy'.

History

An early reference to a book bound in human skin is found in the travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach. Writing about his visit to Bremen in 1710:
During the French Revolution, there were rumours that a tannery for human skin had been established at Meudon outside Paris. The Carnavalet Museum owns a volume containing the French Constitution of 1793 and Declaration of the Rights of Man described as 'passing for being made in human skin imitating calf'.
The majority of well-attested anthropodermic bindings date from the 19th century.

Examples

Criminals

Surviving examples of human skin bindings have often been commissioned, performed, or collected by medical doctors, who have access to cadavers, sometimes those of executed criminals, such as the case of John Horwood in 1821 and William Corder in 1828. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh preserves a notebook bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke after his execution and subsequent public dissection by Professor Alexander Monro in 1829.
What Lawrence Thompson called "the most famous of all anthropodermic bindings" is exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, titled The Highwayman: Narrative of the Life of James Allen alias George Walton. It is by James Allen, who made his deathbed confession in prison in 1837 and asked for a copy bound in his own skin to be presented to a man he once tried to rob and admired for his bravery, and another one for his doctor. Once he died, a piece of his back was taken to a tannery and utilized for the book.

''Dance of Death''

An exhibition of fine bindings at the Grolier Club in 1903 included, in a section of 'Bindings in Curious Materials', three editions of Holbein's Dance of Death in 19th century human skin bindings; two of these now belong to the John Hay Library at Brown University. Other examples of the Dance of Death include an 1856 edition offered at auction by Leonard Smithers in 1895 and an 1842 edition from the personal library of Florin Abelès was by Piasa of Paris in 2006. Bookbinder Edward Hertzberg describes the Monastery Hill Bindery having been approached by "n Army Surgeon... with a copy of Holbein's Dance of Death with the request that we bind it in a piece of human skin, which he brought along."

Other examples

Another tradition, with less supporting evidence, is that books of erotica
have been bound in human skin.
A female admirer of the French astronomer Camille Flammarion supposedly bequeathed her skin to bind one of his books. At Flammarion's observatory, there is a copy of his La pluralité des mondes habités on which is stamped reliure en peau humaine 1880. This story is sometimes told instead about Les terres du ciel and the donor named as the comtesse de Saint-Ange.
The Newberry Library in Chicago owns an Arabic manuscript written in 1848, with a handwritten note that it is bound in human skin, though "it is the opinion of the conservation staff that the binding material is not human skin, but rather highly burnished goat". This book is mentioned in the novel The Time Traveler's Wife, much of which is set in the Newberry.
The National Library of Australia holds a 19th-century poetry book with the inscription "Bound in human skin" on the first page. The binding was performed 'before 1890' and identified as human skin by pathologists in 1992.
A portion of the binding in the copy of Dale Carnegie's Lincoln the Unknown that is part of Temple University's Charles L. Blockson Collection was "taken from the skin of a Negro at a Baltimore Hospital and tanned by the Jewell Belting Company".

Identification

The identification of human skin bindings has been attempted by examining the pattern of hair follicles, to distinguish human skin from that of other animals typically used for bookbinding, such as calf, sheep, goat, and pig. This is a necessarily subjective test, made harder by the distortions in the process of treating leather for binding. Testing a DNA sample is possible in principle, but DNA can be destroyed when skin is tanned, it degrades over time, and it can be contaminated by human readers.
Instead, peptide mass fingerprinting and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization have recently been used to identify the material of bookbindings. A tiny sample is extracted from the book's covering and the collagen analysed by mass spectrometry to identify the variety of proteins which are characteristic of different species. PMF can identify skin as belonging to a primate; since monkeys were almost never used as a source of skin for bindings, this implies human skin.
The Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia owns five anthropodermic books, confirmed by peptide mass fingerprinting in 2015, of which three were bound from the skin of one woman. This makes it the largest collection of such books in one institution. The books can be seen in the associated Mütter Museum.
The John Hay Library at Brown University owns four anthropodermic books, also confirmed by PMF: Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica, two nineteenth-century editions of Holbein's Dance of Death, and Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife.
Three books in the libraries of Harvard University have been reputed to be bound in human skin, but peptide mass fingerprinting has confirmed only one, , held in the Houghton Library.
The Harvard skin book belonged to Dr Ludovic Bouland of Strasbourg, who rebound a second, , now in the Wellcome Library in London. The Wellcome also owns a notebook labelled as bound in the skin of 'the Negro whose Execution caused the War of Independence', presumably Crispus Attucks, but the library doubts that it is actually human skin.

Confirmed examples

Book Location Provenance Binding and photographs
De humani corporis fabrica by Andreas Vesalius Providence
Brown University, John Hay Library, 		Bound in 1867 by Josse Schavye of Brussels for the Paris International Exposition
The Dance of death by Hans Holbein Providence
Brown University, John Hay Library, 		Bound in 1893 by Zaehnsdorf of London
The Dance of death by Hans Holbein Providence
Brown University, John Hay Library, 		Bound between 1898 and 1903 by Alfred J. Cox of Chicago and owned by Harry SelfridgeDecorated with arrows, death's heads, and knucklebones
Mademoiselle Giraud, my wife by Adolphe Belot Providence
Brown University, John Hay Library,
Recueil des secrets by Louise Bourgeois Boursier Philadelphia
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Historical Medical Library, 		Bound in 1887 by Dr John Stockton Hough with skin he had removed from the thigh of Mary Lynch, who died in 1869 of trichinosis in Blockley Almshouse, Philadelphia
Les nouvelles découvertes sur toutes les parties principales de l'homme, et de la femme by Louis Barles Philadelphia
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Historical Medical Library, 		Bound in 1887 by Dr John Stockton Hough with skin he had removed from the thigh of Mary Lynch, who died in 1869 of trichinosis in Blockley Almshouse, Philadelphia
De conceptione adversaria by Charles Drelincourt Philadelphia
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Historical Medical Library, 		Bound by Dr John Stockton Hough with the tattooed wrist skin of a man who died at Philadelphia Hospital in 1869
Speculations on the mode and appearances of impregnation in the human female by Robert Couper Philadelphia
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Historical Medical Library, 		Bound in 1887 by Dr John Stockton Hough with skin he had removed from the thigh of Mary Lynch, who died in 1869 of trichinosis in Blockley Almshouse, Philadelphia
An elementary treatise on human anatomy by Joseph Leidy Philadelphia
College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Historical Medical Library, 		Joseph Leidy's own copy, with his note: 'The leather with which this book is bound is human skin, from a soldier who died during the great Southern Rebellion.'
Le traicté de peyne New York City
The Grolier Club, Grolier Club Library, 		"Bound by Kauffmann-Petit "; Samuel Putnam Avery's copy"bound by Kauffmann-Petit in human skin, tooled in black on spine and covers; gilt turn-ins; marbled endpapers".
Des destinées de l'ame by Arsène Houssaye Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard University, Houghton Library, 		Presented by Arsène Houssaye to the bibliophile Dr Ludovic Bouland of Strasbourg, who bound it in skin which he had removed from 'the back of the unclaimed body of a woman patient in a French mental hospital who died suddenly of apoplexy'
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley Cincinnati, Ohio
University of Cincinnati, Archives & Rare Books Library, 		Given by Bert Smith of Acres of Books to the Department of Rare Books University of Cincinnati in the 1950s.Dark brown half leather over parchment, apparently by the same binder as the Cincinnati Public Library's copy, presumed to be Zaehnsdorf.
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley Cincinnati, Ohio
Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, 		Given by Bert Smith of Acres of Books to the Cincinnati Public Library in 1958.Dark brown full leather, apparently by the same binder as the University of Cincinnati's copy, i.e. Zaehnsdorf.
Le Scarabée d'or by Edgar Allan Poe French private collection Bound by Gustave Rykers of Bruxelles : "Relié en Peau Humaine. G. Rykers."). Sold at auction in 2016 to a French private collector. Human skin confirmed in PMF analysis conducted by Dan Kirby in 2018."brown leather-backed marbled boards, raised bands, decoration of a gold bug descending front the eye-socket of a skull above a crossed sickle and shovel decoration on spine, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt."
Narrative of the Life of James Allen Boston, Massachusetts
Boston Athenæum
"Bound by Peter Low in Allen's skin, treated to look like gray deer skin; bears the cover title "Hic liber Waltonis cute compactus est," stamped in gold upon a black leather rectangle."
Essai sur les lieux et les dangers des sépultures by Félix Vicq d'Azyr Brussels
Royal Library of Belgium
Bound by Josse Schavye of Brussels. Sold by Schavye to the Belgian government in 1896.
Binding decorated with skulls and crossbones.
Human skin binding confirmed in October 2018 by PMF analysis

Supposed examples confirmed as animal skin

Unconfirmed but located examples

Ethical and legal issues

The binding of books in human skin is also a common element within horror films and works of fiction.
Fiction
Television and cinema
Video games