The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame

This is the story of how the young and ambitious Mr Henry Gray and the talented, diffident Mr Henry Vandyke Carter, created the 'Doctor's Bible'. In Ruth Richardson's vivd account of the making of Gray's Anatomy, we encounter too the publishers, the wood engravers whose craft would soon vanish, the printers, and even the women was rooted in the heart of the Empire: ranging across the elegant terraces and cluttered backstreets of London from Belgravia to the City. Here we read about microscopy, medical fame, commerce, destitution, disease-and, not least, spirited from the workhouses and mortuaries of London, the unnamed dead, whose corpses provided the material for Carter's drawings, which were to make Gray's book famous throughout the world.