Surely, you've seen our recent work on anthropodermic bibliopegy, the early modern practice of binding books in human skin? 
 
 No? Well, a quick refresher: some books, since the 16th century but before our own time, were bound in human skin. Why? "The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted," Harvard librarian Heather Cole explained, "or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book." 
 
 Qué romantico! 
 
 Anyway, we know it happened because people refer to it happening in the literature of the time, and also because some books bore inscriptions that literally said that they were bound in skin. 
 
 But such tomes are suspect. You can't just trust anyone who says they've bound a book in human skin. For example, one had this inscription, but turned out to be stupid sheepskin: 
 
 The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. 
 
 And so, I am happy to report, the Houghton Library's copy of Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame "is without a doubt bound in human skin," Cole, who is the assistant curator of modern nooks and manuscripts at the library, reports in a new blog post. (Des destinées de l’ame, by the way, translates to The destiny of the soul.) 

 Houghton Library contains countless curiosities. Perhaps the most disturbing example is Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame (FC8.H8177.879dc), bound in human skin. 
 
 In the mid-1880s, Houssaye (1815-1896) presented his recent book, a meditation on the soul and life after death, to his friend Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839-1932), a noted medical doctor and prominent bibliophile. Bouland bound the book with skin from the unclaimed body of a female mental patient who had died of a stroke. 
 
 Inserted in the volume is an autograph manuscript note written by Bouland: 
 
 “Ce livre est relié en peau humaine parcheminée, c’est pour lui laisser tout son cachet qu’a dessein on n’y a point appliqué d’ornement. En le regardant attentivement on distingue facilement les pores de la peau. Un livre sur l’Ame humaine méritait bien qu’on lui donnait un vetement humain: aussi lui avais je réservé depuis longtemps ce morceau de peau humaine pris sur le dor d’une femme. Il est curieux de voir les aspects différents que prend cette peau selon le mode de préparation au quel elle est soumise. La comparer par exemple avec le petit volume que j’ai dans ma bibliothèque, Sever. Pinaeus de Virginitatis notis qui lui aussi est relié en peau humaine mais tannée au sumac.” “This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman. It is interesting to see the different aspects that change this skin according to the method of preparation to which it is subjected. Compare for example with the small volume I have in my library, Sever. Pinaeus de Virginitatis notis which is also bound in human skin but tanned with sumac.” 
 
 The other volume to which Bouland refers, Séverin Pineau’s De integritatis & corruptionis virginum notis (Amsterdam, 1663), bound by distinguished Paris binder Marcellin Lortic, is now in the collection of the Wellcome Library. 
 
 Des destinées de l’ame was deposited at Houghton in 1934 by book collector John B. Stetson, Jr., and given to the library by Stetson’s widow in 1954. 
 
 While books bound in human skin are now objects of fascination and revulsion, the practice was once somewhat common. Termed anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin has occurred at least since the 16th century. The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book. 
 
 Although this is the only known example of an anthropodermic book in Houghton’s collection, Harvard libraries hold one other example: the Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine holds a French translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Lyon, 1597) which may have an anthropodermic binding. 
 
 (Practicarvm qvaestionvm circa leges regias Hispaniæ primæ partis nouæ collectionis regiæ (Madrid, 1605-1606) in the collections of the Harvard Law School Library Historical & Special Collections, used to be considered a third example; it has since been proven to be sheepskin.) 
 
 [Thanks to Heather Cole, Assistant Curator of Modern Books & Manuscripts, for contributing this post] 

 
 
 Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame, housed in Harvard’s Houghton Library. (Harvard, Houghton Library) 
 
 This book is covered in human flesh. Really. 
 
 Harvard scientists confirmed today that a volume in one of its libraries contained a book that is “without a doubt” bound in human skin. 
 
 The phenomenon is called anthropodermic bibliopegy and it used to be fairly common until — well, frankly, we stopped doing that kind of thing. 
 
 There were three such books suspected to be in the Harvard libraries, but testing found that two of the three were actually bound in sheepskin. 
 
 The final book in the triumvirate is authentically human. 
 
 French novelist and poet Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame, housed in Harvard’s Houghton Library, is described as a “collection of essays meditating on the human spirit,” according to Samuel Jacobs’s archival account in the Crimson: 
 
 Houghton’s associate librarian for collections, Thomas Horrocks, describes the light volume as one of the author’s lesser works. 
 
 Be that as it may, probably the most remarkable thing about the book is its creepy inscription. 
 
 Houssaye reveals that the book’s binding is the human skin taken from the back of a woman, specifically an unclaimed body of a female mental patient who died of a stroke, according to Heather Cole, Houghton’s assistant curator of modern books & manuscripts. 
 
 “By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin,” Houssaye wrote. “A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” 
 
 Using a process called peptide mass fingerprinting, scientists were able to use microscopic samples of the covering to eliminate the possibility that the book was made out of other common binding materials like sheep, cattle or goat skin. 
 
 “The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of Des destinées de l’ame, make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human,” said Bill Lane, director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, in a blog post explaining the findings. 
 
 So there you have it. The real thing that we might all wish had been fake.
– Harvard has confirmed a creepy find in its Houghton Library: A 19th-century book about the soul is bound in human skin. Tests revealed that French poet's Arsène Houssaye’s Des Destinées de l'Ame—The Destiny of the Soul—really does have a human binding, backing up the author's claim in the inscription that it had been bound in skin taken from the back of a female mental patient who died of a stroke, the Washington Post reports. "By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin," Houssaye wrote in the volume he presented to a friend. "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering." Testing in Harvard labs revealed that another book thought to have been bound in human skin was actually bound in sheepskin, despite an inscription reading, "The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632," the Atlantic finds. Revolting as it may seem today, the binding of books in human skins, a practice called "anthropodermic bibliopegy," was once fairly common, the library's blog notes, explaining that "the confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book."