author
James Blake Bailey
d. 1897
Best known for bringing a startling 19th-century body-snatchers' diary back into print, this English librarian and writer had a gift for turning archival material into gripping reading. His work sits at the meeting point of literary curiosity, medical history, and old-world scholarship.
1 Audiobook
About the author
James Blake Bailey was an English librarian and author who died in 1897. He served as Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a role reflected on the title pages of his books, and he wrote on library organization as well as historical subjects.
He is most often remembered for editing The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811–1812 (1896), an unusual and vivid work about the world of grave robbing and anatomy in early 19th-century London. The book combines a primary historical document with Bailey's editorial framing, which helped make a strange and unsettling corner of medical history accessible to later readers.
Other surviving works connected with his name include On Classification for Scientific and Medical Libraries and The Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. A confirmed portrait was not available from the sources I could verify here, so no profile image is included.