| Book | Year | Author | Location | Notes | Ref(s) |
| Narrative of the Life of James Allen | 1837 | James Allen | Boston Athenæum | The deathbed confession of James Allen, a nineteenth-century highwayman in Massachusetts. He requested a copy of his printed memoirs be bound in his skin and gifted to John Fenno, a man who had resisted Allen's attempt to rob him; it is the only known anthropodermic book bound with the consent of its source. Before being bequeathed to the Athenæum, Fenno's copy was reportedly kept in the family home and used to spank his children. | |
| Le traicté de Peyne: poëme allégorique dédié à Monseigneur et à Madame de Lorraynne | 16th century | Anonymous | Grolier Club | A BDSM-oriented erotic poem, and the only known example of anthropodermic erotica. The anthropodermic copy is a nineteenth-century printing. Rosenbloom gives the book as an example of the diversity of anthropodermic books; prior to its confirmation, she and the Anthropodermic Book Project assumed there were no authentic examples of erotica bound in human skin. | |
| Recueil des secrets | 1635 | Louise Boursier | College of Physicians of Philadelphia | A compilation of contemporary folk remedies by Boursier, the sage-femme (midwife) to the court, shortly following her retreat from court facing pressure from male physicians. The anthropodermic copy is from the collection of John Stockton Hough, a nineteenth-century physician and bibliophile who bound three books in the skin of Mary Lynch, an impoverished young Irish émigré he autopsied in 1869 and diagnosed with Philadelphia's first recorded case of trichinosis. | |
| Les nouvelles découvertes sur toutes les parties principales de l’homme, et de la femme | 1680 | Louis Barles | College of Physicians of Philadelphia | Another book from Hough's collection believed to be bound in Lynch's skin. | |
| Speculations on the Mode and Appearances of Impregnation in the Human Female | 1789 | Robert Couper | College of Physicians of Philadelphia | Another book from Hough's collection believed to be bound in Lynch's skin. | |
| De conceptione adversaria | 1686 | Charles Drelincourt | College of Physicians of Philadelphia | Hough's fourth book in the collection of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; like Recueil des secrets and Speculations on the Mode and Appearances of Impregnation in the Human Female, about reproduction. Speculated to be bound in the skin of Thomas McCloskey, who died in the Philadelphia General Hospital in February 1869. | |
| Catalog des sciences médicales | 1865 | Bibliothèque nationale | Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania | Another book from Hough's collection, potentially bound by Hough himself. Though all of Hough's anthropodermic books were bound in the late 1880s, the skin used for this book seems to have been acquired shortly prior to its binding, rather than the cases of Lynch and McCloskey, who died decades before and whose skins were kept over that time. The book is a catalogue of medical incunabula (early printed books of Europe). Rosenbloom described the work as "like a nineteenth-century library's equivalent of a phone directory" and expressed her surprise when the book was confirmed authentic, due to its tonal dissimilarity to other known anthropodermic books. | |
| An Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy | 1861 | Joseph Leidy | College of Physicians of Philadelphia | One of Leidy's personal copies of his anatomical treatise and self-declared magnum opus. Leidy, an anatomist and paleontologist, volunteered as a surgeon and scientific researcher for the Civil War effort; he bound one of his copies of the book in the skin of a soldier killed in action. | |
| De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem | 1543 | Andreas Vesalius | John Hay Library, Brown University | A "text on human dissection"; two reportedly anthropodermic copies were bound by Josse Schavye [nl] during the 1860s. The copy at Brown was sold to alumnus William Louttit Jr in 1874 and eventually bequeathed to the university; it was confirmed as anthropodermic in 2015. The other copy's fate is unclear. Reportedly added to the Belgian royal family's personal library by King Albert I (countering a claim it was once owned by Leopold II), it has not been accounted for since the 1990s. | |
| Anatomy Epitomized and Illustrated | 1682 | Thomas Gibson | Huntington Library | An early anatomy manual, given by Rosenbloom as a representative example of known anthropodermic books. | |
| Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral | 1773 | Phillis Wheatley | Cincinnati Public Library; University of Cincinnati | A collection of poems by Wheatley, the first African-American woman to publish a book, is one of very few works with multiple known anthropodermic copies. It is unclear why these copies were so bound; some have speculated they may be racially motivated, but no evidence supports the belief. Other anthropodermic books that claim racial motivations have been found inauthentic. | |
| Dance of Death | 1526 | Hans Holbein the Younger | John Hay Library, Brown University | Two printings of Holbein's Dance of Death woodcuts, from 1816 and 1898 respectively, are confirmed to be bound in human skin. Reports predating peptide mass fingerprinting state that there are six anthropodermic copies. | |
| Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife | 1891 | Adolphe Belot | John Hay Library, Brown University | An English translation of a French work, a tale of a man's mental breakdown following his lesbian wife leaving him; described by Jacob Gordon, special collections librarian at Juniata College, as Lovecraftian in its sensibility. Gordon describes the book's 2015 confirmation as anthropodermic as granting "unfortunate credence to the more dubious claims of erotic works bound in skin from a woman's breast". | |
| "The Gold-Bug" | 1843 | Edgar Allan Poe | Private collection | Poe's breakthrough novelette, which had a hand in a contemporary fashion for cryptography. Held by a French collector, one of the few confirmed anthropodermic works in private collections. An inscription on the flyleaf referencing the copy's anthropodermic provenance is attributed to Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and implies it may have once been owned by John Steinbeck. | |
| Essai sur les lieux et les dangers des sépultures | 1778 | Félix Vicq-d'Azyr | Royal Library of Belgium | Mentioned in Rosenbloom's list of confirmed anthropodermic books, without further detail. | |
| Nazi photo album | Unknown | Unknown | Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum | A Nazi photo album likely created at the Buchenwald concentration camp from the skin of Holocaust victims. The book was confirmed by researchers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2020 to be made of human skin with fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. | |
