Anthropodermic bibliopegy

Terminology

Bibliopegy (/bɪblɪˈɒpɪdʒi/ bib-li-OP-i-jee) is a rare synonym for bookbinding. It combines the Ancient Greek βιβλίον (biblion = book) and πηγία (pegia, from pegnynai = to fasten). 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 ἄνθρωπος (anthropos = man or human) and δέρμα (derma = skin), does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary and appears never to be used in contexts other than bookbinding. 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:

Auch sahen wir noch ein klein Büchelgen in Duodetz, Molleri manuale præparationis ad mortem. Man würde daran wohl nichts merkwürdiges finden, und warum es allhier stehe, erkennen, wenn man nicht vornen läse, daß es in Menschen-Leder eingebunden sey; welcher sonderbare Band, desgleichen ich noch nie gesehen, sich zu diesem Buche, zu besserer Betrachtung des Todes, wohl schicket. Man sollte es wohl vor Schwein-Leder ansehen.

(We also saw a little duodecimo, Molleri manuale præparationis ad mortem. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, and you couldn't understand why it was here until you read in the front that it was bound in human leather. This unusual binding, the like of which I had never before seen, seemed especially well adapted to this book, dedicated to more meditation about death. You would take it for pig skin.)

The oldest surviving anthropodermic binding appears to date from later in the 18th century. The Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA owns a copy of Relation des mouvemens de la ville de Messine, printed in 1676, with the following note believed to have been written by James Westfall Thompson: 'The binding is human skin. The book is from the library of Armand Jerome Bignon (1711-1772), librarian of Louis XV.'

The majority of well-attested anthropodermic bindings date from the 19th century. 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.

Examples

Surviving historical examples of this technique include anatomy texts bound with the skin of dissected cadavers, volumes created as a bequest and bound with the skin of the testator, and copies of judicial proceedings bound in the skin of the murderer convicted in those proceedings, such as in the case of John Horwood in 1821 and the Red Barn Murder in 1828. There is also a tradition of certain volumes of erotica being bound in human skin. Examples reported include a copy of the Marquis de Sade's Justine et Juliette bound in tanned skin from female breasts. Other examples are known, with the feature of the intact human nipple on one or more of the boards of the book.

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 asked to have his memoir bound in his own skin and presented to a man he once tried to rob and admired for his bravery.

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.

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 French astronomer Camille Flammarion's book Les terres du ciel (The Worlds of the Sky) (1877) was bound with the skin donated from a female admirer.

A portion of the binding in the copy of Dale Carnegie's Lincoln the Unknown that is part of the collection 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".

The National Library of Australia holds a book of 18th century poetry with the inscription "Bound in human skin" on the first page.

Bookbinder Edward Hertzberg describes the Monastery Hill Bindery having been approached by "[a]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." Further description of the proffered skin and binding, which was inlaid with different piece of leather and decorated with a skull, is in the short paragraph.

A contemporary account of the execution of Henry Garnet for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against ... Garnet a Jesuit, was alleged to be bound in Garnet's skin when auctioned in 2007.

As well as the examples of the Dance of Death exhibited at the Grolier Club (see above), an 1856 edition was offered at auction by Leonard Smithers in 1895 and an 1842 edition from the personal library of Florin Abelès was offered at auction by Piasa of Paris in 2006.

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 (PMF) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) 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 (1891).

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, Des destinées de l'ame by Arsène Houssaye, held in the Houghton Library. (The other two books at Harvard were determined to be bound in sheepskin, the first being Ovid's Metamorphoses held in the Countway Library, the second being a treatise on Spanish law, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias Hispaniae, held in the library of Harvard Law School .)

The Harvard skin book belonged to Dr Ludovic Bouland of Strasbourg, who owned a second, De integritatis & corruptionis virginum notis, 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.

Peptide mass fingerprinting was also used to determine the binding material for a miniature devotional book in the University of California's Bancroft Library, L'office de l'Eglise en françois. It is now known not to be bound in human skin but horse hide, or a mixture of horse and goatskin.

Ethical and legal issues

Popular culture

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