Dark Archives
A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
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4.3 • 8 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand?
In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy—the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.
A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives—captivating and macabre in all the right ways—she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
UCLA librarian Rosenbloom debuts with a fascinating and sober-minded exploration of the history, methodology, and ethics of anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin. She details the loosely regulated professional realm of the 19th-century doctors who used skin from medical cadavers to create most of the world's known anthropodermic books, and embarks on a transatlantic search for specimens, including multiple copies of 18th-century African American poet Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral and a 19th-century highwayman's memoir bound in the author's own skin (per his pre-execution request). Rosenbloom's conversational tone and obvious excitement at the thrill of the chase counterbalances the macabre nature of her subject. While she believes in the value of preserving anthropodermic books in order to "reckon with... the culture in which they were created," she interviews skeptics, including Princeton librarian Paul Needham, who advocates strongly for their interment. Lighter moments, such as a visit to an artisanal tanning facility that results in the destruction of Rosenbloom's Keds, make her obsession with the sometimes gruesome stories behind these books relatable. This unique and well-researched account shines an intriguing light on a hidden corner of the rare books world.
