John Hay Library
H.P. Lovecraft's letters and books bound in human skin are among a few of the treasures this library has to offer
Category Repositories of Knowledge
Many prestigious universities have correlating prestigious libraries: the Bancroft Library at the University of Berkeley, California, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, the Loeb Library at Harvard. But the John Hay Library, at Brown University, has some very unusual specimens. This library, in Providence, Rhode Island (RI), houses an extraordinary collections of one-of-a-kind books & manuscripts.
This library also has three anthropodermic books. If you can decode the Latin roots, that means books bound in human skin. Perhaps this goes without saying, but it is very rare to bind a book with human skin. Historically, an anatomy textbook could be bound with the skin of a cadaver, and in a few cases, someone would request that upon their death their skin to be used to bind a book.
There are three books in the John Hay Library bound with human skin. Appropriately, one is the famous anatomy textbook De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius. They also have two copies of the same book, Dance of Death by Hans Holbein the Younger, which were rebound anthropodermically in 1898.
The library has other, less hair-raising collections, including the papers and personal library of John Hay, Class of 1858, who was the private secretary of Abraham Lincoln and later was Secretary of State, as well as more modern treasures, such as the personal manuscripts and letters of H.P. Lovecraft.
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- Hours Monday - Friday 9 AM - 6 PM/1-5 PM Sundays (during academic year) - special hours during summer, holidays & exams
- Website John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, RI
- Address 20 Prospect Street, Providence, Rhode Island, 138, United States
- Cost Open to the public, w/ presentation of photo ID
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