Happening October 5: Reading and Q&A With ‘Dark Archives’ Author Megan Rosenbloom

A fascinating, terrifying look at the rarest books―bound in human skin―and the stories of their creation.


Join Us Monday October 5, 2020

7PM ET

Swann Senior Specialist of Early Printed Books, Devon Eastland, will be in conversation with author Megan Rosenbloom on the contents her forthcoming book, Dark Archives, and how it relates to the market for (and mystique behind) rare and antiquarian books.


Megan Rosenbloom’s first book, Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin publishes October 20, 2020. View the book trailer.

If you’d like to purchase Dark Archives, we recommend preordering through Skylight Books, Los Angeles, where the author will be signing  copies featuring a bespoke bookplate designed by Landis Blair.


About the Speakers

Megan Rosenbloom

Megan Curran Rosenbloom is Collection Strategies Librarian at UCLA Library in Los Angeles. Megan served as a medical librarian for many years, where she developed a keen interest in the history of medicine and rare books. She is Obituary Editor of the Journal of the Medical Library Association and President of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine. She is actively involved in a number of ways in the Medical Library Association and other professional organizations (for details, consult CV). Megan Rosenbloom is the co-founder and director of Death Salon, the event arm of The Order of the Good Death, and a leader in the Death Positive movement. She is on a research team out to find the historic and scientific truths behind the world’s alleged books bound in human skin.

Photo by Polly Antonia Barrowman.


Devon Eastland

Devon Eastland is Swann Galleries’ Senior Specialist of early printed books. Devon has three decades of experience as a bookseller—in 1992 she began a bookselling business that focused on books printed before 1700, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2012, Devon began working in the auction world at Skinner, as Director of the Book Department, handling a variety of material. She appeared as a guest appraiser on the 2019 season of Antiques Roadshow, and is also an auctioneer. She has been a practicing bookbinder for thirty years, and has produced custom and period-correct books for films, including Greta Gerwig’s production of Little Women, appearing onscreen in the bookbinding sequences in the film.

Cyanotype of an anatomy class at the Woman’s Medical College
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1895. At Auction in the next Swann offering of Early Printed Books, October 27, 2020.

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