The most famous books bound in human skin

Human skin bindings are often found in books and films of the fantasy and horror genres. Usually they are supplied with grimoires - witchcraft books with spells. But such a specific design is not at all a figment of the imagination of writers and screenwriters. Books covered with real human skin have existed in the past and, moreover, exist today. Some of them can even be seen in museums.

In films, witchcraft books with leather covers look terrifying. But in reality, human skin bindings are not at all impressive. They do not look flashy, just like publications with covers made of pigskin or calfskin, and you will hardly be able to distinguish them from the outside. But this does not make the stories of such books any less creepy.

Such books look ordinary, but each of them is very rare. Therefore, at all times there were many who wanted to counterfeit rarities in order to make money. For centuries, swindlers got away with it, but today, when peptide mapping is used to identify skin, fakes are quickly exposed.

As of 2020, of the 31 such books analyzed, only 18 were found to contain real human skin. Most of them do not date back to the Dark Middle Ages. They were made in the quite enlightened 18th and 19th centuries. The skin was not taken from the bodies of innocent victims killed during a terrible ritual. To do this, they used material from the bodies of unidentified and therefore unclaimed bodies and executed criminals.

Leather bound book by John Hornwood. In 1821 he was sentenced to hang for killing a woman out of jealousy. John hit the victim on the head with a stone and she soon died. However, from the materials of the case, by the way, collected in the book itself, it becomes clear that the guilt of the jealous person has not been completely proven. Perhaps the woman died from complications after a surgical operation that was unsuccessfully performed before the conflict. The cover was made by surgeon Smith, who received the hanged man's body for scientific research.

The photo above is not a book, but a notebook, but with an anthropodermic binding. The leather used to make the cover belonged to murderer William Burke, who supplied the bodies of his victims to Edinburgh surgeon Robert Knox. The inscription on the cover clearly outlines the situation: “Burke's leather notebook.” On the reverse side is the date of the villain’s execution: “Executed 28 Jan 1829.” Ironically, Burke's corpse was transferred to the anatomical theater, where it was dissected in front of spectators, like the bodies of his victims.

And this beautiful embossing is made on the anthropodermic binding of a book published in 1544. She saw the light in an ordinary cover, and was covered with human skin in 1869. The inscription on the inside casually states: “Hic liber femineo corio convestitus est,” that is, “This book is bound in the skin of a woman.” Whose skin it was is unknown. A copy is kept in the library of the Smithsonian University in the USA.

A book on philosophy from a three-volume Renaissance book. Two more books are devoted to the history of Ancient Rome. The volumes were discovered quite recently in the storage rooms of the Harvard Library and, it seemed, nothing foreshadowed it. But someone decided to check the skin and it turned out that it was human!

A manuscript in ancient Latin with elements of a cipher, created around 1532. Of course, it is in a “human” binding. The exhibit is kept in the Museum of Rare Publications at the National Academic Library in the Kazakh capital Astana. The book contains many mysteries, because out of 330 pages, scientists have only been able to read 10.