(By claiming a volume was bound in skin, book dealers of yore could juice their profit margins, creating ample incentive to lie.)Īuthentic specimens, though rare, take on outsized importance because they betray a human willingness to obliterate consent, and even personhood, for aesthetic or supremacist ends. The Anthropodermic Book Project, of which Rosenbloom is a member, has identified only 18 books to date that live up to their human-skin billing. Lovecraft short story features “ a locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin,” and a skin-bound volume drives the plot of Chuck Palahniuk’s 2002 novel “Lullaby.” Still, it appears so far that impostor skin books outnumber real ones. Human skin-covered books have captivated literary audiences for centuries: A classic H.P.
As Rosenbloom crisscrosses the globe to confirm the purported origins of skin-bound books - a cracking detective story in itself - her journey offers unusual insight into what defines informed consent, what separates homage from exploitation, and how power disparities can breed casual inhumanity.īOOK REVIEW - “Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin,” by Megan Rosenbloom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 288 pages). It’s easy to assume this topic is too restricted or too gruesome for a book of its own, but “Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin,” proves that assumption wrong.
This copy of Houssaye’s masterwork had a singular distinction: At the time, it was the only book on the planet proven to be bound in human skin.įor Rosenbloom, a librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles, the trip served as her entrée into a field she’d studied for years: “anthropodermic bibliopegy,” the practice of binding books in human epidermis.
I n 2015, Megan Rosenbloom traveled to Harvard University’s Houghton Library in search of a book called “Des destinées de l’âme ” (“Destinies of the Soul”), by the French author Arsène Houssaye.
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