The Poison Book Project team has updated the Arsenical Books Database with recent results from ongoing analysis on materials in Winterthur Library and the Poison Book Project Study Collection. As of March 22, 2024, the database of nineteenth-century, mass-produced bookbindings with arsenical green components lists 269 individual books (representing 238 titles/imprints). Exciting new additions include a friendship album from New York publishers Leavitt & Allen with an arsenical green leather onlay on front and back boards; a lithographic peep show with hand coloring; and a 6-volume set of French cartonnage bindings. Our thanks to eagle-eyed Allie Alvis, Curator of Special Collections at Winterthur Library; Dr. Liora Mael, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Conservation Science at the University of Delaware; Brittany Murray, second-year WUDPAC Fellow; and Emily MacMillan, Winterthur intern and second-year book conservation student at West Dean College of Arts, Design, Craft & Conservation. It takes a village to track down and inventory ‘poison books’!
Album of the Heart (New York: Leavitt & Allen, [c.1860]). Courtesy of WUDPAC Study Collection.