"Tucked in a wooden box in the Boston Athenaeum library is a curious book. The book has "a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper" and bears the title "Hic Liber Waltonis Cute Compactus Est." The book is the 1837 memoirs of a highwayman, bank robber, and "sneak thief" James Allen. The notorious highwayman once declared himself to be the "'master of his own skin." These would prove portentous words, for his memoirs of a lifetime of ill deeds are bound in his own skin. Anthropodermic bibliopegy or the practice of binding books in human skin has a curious history begining in the middle ages when parchments made of human skin began showing up. The first known books bound in human skin come from the French revolution when a number of copies of the French Constitution were bound in the skin of those who opposed the new republic. (These can be seen in the in the Museum Carnavalet in Paris.)" - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

:P Gross - comix aka martha

Eww. But interesting! - Lindsay