Books Bound in Human Skin; Lampshade Myth?

On a daytrip to Providence during fly-out week, I stumbled across an unusual and startling artifact on display at Brown University's John Hay Library - an anatomy book bound in human skin. While such specimens are unusual, they are not as rare as you might think. Many older libraries and rare book collectors, including several at Harvard and in the Boston area, have an almost-literal skeleton in the closet: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the technical term for books bound in human skin.

While it's not clear how many extant books actually have been bound in human skin, many older libraries (such as the library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia which has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo) have such tomes in their collection, suggesting that anthropodermically bound books number somewhere in the hundreds. Many of these books were likely bound in the 18th or 19th centuries, though some may be centuries older, while a few may even be younger.

Harvard's Human Book Bindings

As with many venerable American institutions, there are several anthropodermically bound books in the Harvard library system, including two at the medical school library and one at Houghton, the rare book library on the main campus. Of primary interest to law students, however, is an early 17th century treatise on Spanish law in the rare book collection of the Langdell Law Library, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae…

A faint inscription on the last page of the book reads: "The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace." (The Wavuma appear to be an African tribe, possibly in current Zimbabwe.)

Based on his research into the history of the book, curator David Ferris believes the inscription is accurate and that the book is indeed bound in human skin. In 1992, a tiny piece of the binding was tested for DNA but the test was inconclusive as the tanning process was deemed to have destroyed the DNA beyond identification.

The binding is stained and parchment-like, rigid (almost brittle) to the touch. The spine is crudely stitched to the front and back panels in a manner that resembles the stitching on primitive leather moccasins displayed in a museum. In a none-too-surprising act of hubris or unwitting efficiency, over-zealous law librarians of a half-century ago committed the blunder of stamping "Harvard Law Library" on the spine of the antique tome.

Harvard acquired the book in February 1946 from a rare book dealer in New Orleans for the cost of $42.50. It is kept in its own box in the rare book collection, but otherwise receives no special treatment. In order to view the book, members of the university community must have a legitimate research interest, fill out some paperwork, check their personal belongings into a locker outside the rare book room, and wait for the book to be retrieved from the storage area. However, if there is sufficient interest in seeing the book, a general viewing may be planned for those who indicate an interest. The library staff is sensitive to the macabre nature of the book and Ferris prefers that the book be viewed as a memento mori rather than a sideshow curiosity.

History of Anthropodermic Bindings

The use of human skin as a medium may be as old as human history itself - the flaying of defeated enemies or prisoners and the use/abuse of their skin dates back to ancient and perhaps even prehistoric times. The ancient Assyrians, in particular, were known for flaying their captives alive and displaying the skins on city walls. Legends and folk tales unavoidably contaminate the factual history of human skin use; books or parchments made of human skin are rumored to have been created as early as the middle ages, when the tanning of human skin (and preservation of other body parts) became something of a fad. While their credibility is questionable, there are some historical reports of a 13th century bible and a text of the Decretals (Catholic canon law) written on human skin.

The first reliable examples of anthropodermic bindings come from the 17th century, but the practice really seems to have taken off during the French Revolution. The derma of victims of that bloodthirsty terror were sometimes used to bind books by its proponents; among other anthropodermically bound documents from that period are a copy of The Rights of Man and several copies of the French Constitution of 1793. From at least this time forward, titillating tales about the mistreatment of human skin became a popular propagandistic tool, used in not only the French Revolution but also the American Civil War, and World Wars I & II.

In the 19th century, book bindings in human skin captured the romantic notions of the upper class, and anthropodermic bindings became more common. A frequent subject of such bindings were anatomy textbooks, which doctors and medical students may have had bound in the skin of cadavers they had dissected. An early example is the anthropodermic book found in Brown's John Hay library, Vesalius' classic work of anatomy, De Humanis Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body). The close association of medical and legal gentry of the day led to more than a few law books bound in a similar manner.

Around the same time, the skin of executed criminals was occasionally used for book bindings. The first known example of this was the binding of Samuel Johnson's dictionary in the skin of criminal James Johnson (relation unknown), after the latter was hung in Norwich in 1818. The museum of Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, England contains a more famous example - an account of the trial proceedings against William Corder, perpetrator of the storied 'Murder in the Red Barn' of Maria Martin in 1827, bound in the executed murderer's skin.