Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

Books bound in human skin — and the sometimes sensational stories surrounding them — have long occupied an odd place in the annals of the rare book world. Over the years, they have been ...

Harvard University announced Wednesday that it removed the human skin binding from a gruesome book in its library. The book, called Des destinées de l’âme, was published in the 1880s by French ...

The book's space in the library has long been in question, as it was bound with a woman's skin and included a handwritten note from its first owner saying, "a book about the human soul deserved to ...

Harvard removes human skin used as binding for 1880s book, apologizes The copy of Arsène Houssaye’s "Des destinées de l’âme" was found in the Houghton Library and has been part of the ...

The book bound in human skin was a copy of “Des Destinées de L’âme,” by Arsène Houssaye, a 19th-century French novelist and poet.

The book's first owner, French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), created the binding with the skin of a deceased patient in the hospital where he worked while he was a medical student.

Harvard Library says it has removed a book that's been in its collection for nearly a century that is partially made with human skin that was taken from a deceased hospital patient without consent ...

Harvard University recently made a decision to remove a book with human skin binding from its campus library. Out of a collection of 20 million books found at Houghton Library, Arsène Houssaye ...

Heritage assistant Abbie Smith got to hold the books on her first day in the job and said they felt "like a real book". "If you did not tell people it was bound in human skin, I do not really ...

Harvard University has removed human skin binding from a book that has been in its library collection for 90 years and apologized for its “past failures” in managing the volume; ...