Boston Athenaeum — the skin-bound book

The story

In 1837, a career highwayman named James Allen lay dying of tuberculosis inside Massachusetts State Prison. Dictating his deathbed confession to the warden, he chronicled a lifetime of robberies, prison stints, and aliases. But Allen wanted a far more permanent monument than printer's ink on paper. Before he died, he left explicit written instructions that a strip of skin flayed from his back be tanned and used to bind his memoir.

The macabre volume wasn't intended for a public shelf; it was bound as a gift of respect. Years earlier, Allen had attempted to rob a traveler named John A. Fenno Jr. on the road, but Fenno fought back, disarmed the thief, and handed him over to the law. Impressed by the rare victim who stood his ground, Allen insisted that the skin-bound confession be delivered to Fenno after his death. Fenno’s daughter eventually donated the book to the Boston Athenaeum prior to 1864, where it has remained locked in special collections ever since.

At first glance, the book looks like a modest, light-gray 19th-century binding. Look closely at the cover, however, and you'll find gold Latin lettering tooled directly into the hide: 'Hic Liber Waltonis Cute Compactus Est'—'This book is bound in the skin of Walton,' referencing one of Allen's primary aliases. While claims of anthropodermic bibliopegy are often debunked as hogskin or calfskin, peptide mass fingerprinting by the Anthropodermic Book Project confirmed that this cover is genuine human skin.