As of May 2019, 31 out of 50 books in public institutions supposed to have anthropodermIC bindings have been confirmed as human and 13 have been demonstrated to be animal leather instead. Surviving examples of human skin bindings have often been commissioned, performed, or collected by medical doctors.
About Anthropodermic bibliopegy in brief
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. It is a rare synonym for bookbinding. As of May 2019, 31 out of 50 books in public institutions supposed to have anthropodermIC bindings have been confirmed as human and 13 have been demonstrated to be animal leather instead. 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 Highwayman: Narrative of the Life of James Allen alias George Walton is exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum. James Allen 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. Once he died, a piece of his back was taken to a tannery and utilized for the book. A female admirer of the French astronomer Camille Flammarion supposedly bequeathed her skin to bind one of his books.
Another tradition, with less supporting evidence, is that books of erotica have been bound in human Skin. The Newberry Library of Australia holds a 19th-century poetry book with the inscription ‘Bound in Human skin’ The first binding was performed ‘before the first page was written’ in the novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, much of which is set in Australia, which is in the National Library of Queensland. The book is mentioned in the book’s inscription: ‘Before the first pages were written, a goat was used to bind it, rather than a human, but rather highly highly burnished goat.’ It is sometimes told that Les terres du ciel is named as the donor and the donor is called Les terreres de Saint-Angeau, but this is not the case. The Carnavalet Museum owns a volume containing the French Constitution of 1793 and Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen described as ‘passing for being made inhuman skin imitating calf’
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This page is based on the article Anthropodermic bibliopegy published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
