Steve Gilbert's The Tattoo History Source Book (2000), published by PowerHouse Books, compiled primary source documents on tattoo history from ancient times to the present, making the academic study of tattooing accessible to a wider audience and establishing it as a legitimate field of historical inquiry. The book drew together classical texts, travel accounts, legal documents, and anthropological studies to demonstrate the global antiquity and cultural significance of tattooing. Its publication marked a turning point in the academic legitimisation of body modification as a subject worthy of serious historical and literary-cultural study.

The academicisation of tattoo history that The Tattoo History Source Book represented contributed to the growing body of literary scholarship that treated the tattooed body as a meaningful cultural text. Its compilation of primary sources enabled literary critics and poets to engage with the history of body modification with greater precision and depth, connecting specific poetic treatments of tattooing to documented historical practices. The book also reinforced the growing tendency in contemporary poetry criticism to read the body's modifications as a form of autobiography and cultural inscription parallel to the written text.