Vertiginous Accounts: *Travels in the Air* (1871 edition) — The Public Domain Review
Expedition accounts of aeronauts bravely venturing into the heavens on hot-air balloons.| The Public Domain Review
Expedition accounts of aeronauts bravely venturing into the heavens on hot-air balloons.| The Public Domain Review
Partially banned upon publication and translated into English for the first time this year, *René, or: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences* (1783) found new readers in the communist era thanks to its critiques of feudalism, capitalism, and the Catholic Church. Dobrota Pucherová introduces us to this hybrid work, which mixes the bildungsroman with the philosophical novel, the romance, the adventure story, the travelogue, the history book, and the orientalist fantasy.| The Public Domain Review
A "living picture" film staging Botticelli’s *Birth of Venus* with a twist.| The Public Domain Review
Paintings illustrating Pliny the Elders’ account of the origins of art.| The Public Domain Review
A Rapture that wasn’t, in 2025 and 1844.| The Public Domain Review
A compilation of historical gifting traditions in England, with a focus on the peculiar.| The Public Domain Review
Accused of posing as foreign royalty to lure her young suitor into a bigamous marriage, Mary Carleton was the subject of dozens of pamphlets and broadsides published in the mid-17th century, including by Carleton herself. Investigating the fraudster’s life, Laura Kolb finds a self-fashioning figure who both influenced the emergence of the English novel and serves as a strange precursor to our modern-day fascination with conwomen and counterfeits, like the heiress manqué Anna Delvey.| The Public Domain Review
A man who “believed in nothing, not even himself”, Henri Rochefort is now a minor footnote in the annals of modern journalism. However, at the height of his notoriety, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, his writings, political activities, imprisonments, and escapes were the stuff of newspaper gossip around the world. How did a self-described “errant journalist and literary poacher” rise to power on the wings of sarcasm and ridicule to reshape France’s political landscape? Vlad Solom...| The Public Domain Review
Identical photographs of the artist, each with a unique miniature painting at the centre.| The Public Domain Review
A manuscript that pairs illustrations of cats with poetic descriptions and notes on what mystical benefits their owners might hope to accrue.| The Public Domain Review
Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores the early modern fascination with this quasi-spiritual technology and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced.| The Public Domain Review
A modernist manifesto inspired (controversially) by the Tupi people of Brazil.| The Public Domain Review
Commemorative manuscript featuring illustrations of pageants, costumes, and fireworks, later further illustrated by a separate artist, with floral motifs.| The Public Domain Review
Female astronomical first, in 2025 and 1787.| The Public Domain Review
A trick film in the peepshow vein, involving magnification and mites on a block of cheese.| The Public Domain Review
As Chinese immigration to California accelerated across the 19th century, the hairstyle known as the queue — a long, braided pony tail — became the subject of white Americans’ fascination, disgust, and legal regulation. Sarah Gold McBride explores why hair served as an index of political subjecthood, and how the queue exposed cracks in American norms regarding gender, economy, and citizenship.| The Public Domain Review
A crop circle sighting tinged with Christian morality.| The Public Domain Review
Time travel and murder during a New York heat wave.| The Public Domain Review
Excerpts from a dazzling image collection, discovered in a Norwegian barn in the 1980s, that experiments with the presentation of gender.| The Public Domain Review
In 1853, John Benjamin Dancer achieved a feat of seemingly impossible scale: he shrunk an image to the size of a sharpened pencil tip. Anika Burgess explores the invention of microphotography and its influence on erotic paraphernalia and military communications.| The Public Domain Review
Eleventh instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
The sole example of a Bauhaus workshop’s arcane theatrical scoring system, combining colours, words, and complex symbolic notation.| The Public Domain Review
The first comprehensive history of marionette artistry in the English language.| The Public Domain Review
Depictions of the mythical creatures known as Blemmyes: humanoids whose eyes, nose, and mouth are embedded in their breast.| The Public Domain Review
In 1840, British architect George Wightwick published a world history of architecture in the Romantic mode, inviting readers to enter a vast garden where Buddhist iconography rubs shoulders with Greek temples and Egyptian pyramids gaze upon Gothic cathedrals. His intended audience? Idle women. Matthew Mullane revisits this visionary but ultimately unpopular text, revealing the legacy of attempts to gatekeep the realms of imagination and fantasy pertaining to the built environment.| The Public Domain Review
Tenth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
A set of drawing workbooks embroiled in debates about the Indigenist aesthetic movement.| The Public Domain Review
A series of conjectures about the primal scene of writing.| The Public Domain Review
A stunning six-foot-long map that joins the worlds of various myths and stories for the childhood adventurer.| The Public Domain Review
As the story goes, Old Tom Parr was relatively healthy for being 152 until a visit to noxious, polluted London in 1635 cut his long life short. Katherine Harvey investigates the early modern claims surrounding this supercentarian and the fraudulent longevity business that became his namesake in the 19th century.| The Public Domain Review
Ninth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
A landmark work of social reform — proposing a land value tax — that helped usher in the Progressive Era.| The Public Domain Review
French overseas imprisonment, in 2025 and 1852.| The Public Domain Review
Stunning illustrations from the first monograph on goldfish published in Europe.| The Public Domain Review
The earliest full-length work of apiculture published in English, which popularised the discovery that bee colonies have queens instead of kings.| The Public Domain Review
In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic. Whitney Rakich examines the far-reaching ostrich industry through a peculiar do-it-yourself-style book: Alexander Paul’s The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer (1888), a text interleaved with richly colored specimens.| The Public Domain Review
Aby Warburg spent his life finding forms that could hold their own against the flow of time. All the while, as Kevin Dann explores, he was churning on the brink of madness with the sense that he himself was changing — into a terrifying animal. What kind of history would a werewolf write?| The Public Domain Review
Images gathered during a survey by Ferdinand V. Hayden, who was responsible for the designation of Yellowstone as a national park.| The Public Domain Review
Eighth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
Papal elections begin, in 2025 and 1268.| The Public Domain Review
Woodcut knots likely inspired by Mamluk decorative metalwork.| The Public Domain Review
A 1925 Soviet Children’s book about a little screw whose importance is overlooked.| The Public Domain Review
Seventh instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
In 1902, a woman named Mary MacLane from Butte, Montana, became an international sensation after publishing a scandalous journal recording life at the age of 19. Rereading this often-forgotten debut, Hunter Dukes finds a voice that hungers for worldly experience, brims with bisexual longing, and rages against the injustices of youth.| The Public Domain Review
Photographs of the life-size doll that Kokoschka had made to resemble his ex-lover Alma Mahler.| The Public Domain Review
Images from a ritual practised for 127 generations.| The Public Domain Review
Pamphlets on sea beasts produced for the International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883.| The Public Domain Review
In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia. Eva Miller traces how both the mythology of Babel and reconstructions of stepped-pyramid forms influenced skyscraper design, speculative cinema in the 1910s and 20s, and, above all else, the retrofuturist dreams of Hugh Ferriss, architectural delineator extraordinaire.| The Public Domain Review
Sixth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
Sheet music whose notes have been replaced by rambunctious cats.| The Public Domain Review
Edo-era prints of a loving demon with adopted or biological son.| The Public Domain Review
An encyclopedic tome of health advice that unpicks the biases of its time.| The Public Domain Review
Held in Jim Crow–era Nevada on the 4th of July, the 1910 World Heavyweight Championship was slated to be a fight to remember. Moonlighting as a boxing journalist, novelist Jack London cheered on Jim Jeffries — ringside and on the page — as the “Great White Hope", a contender to take back the title from Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion. Andrew Rihn examines the contradictions of London’s racial rhetoric, which is more complex and convoluted than it may initially app...| The Public Domain Review
Fifth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
Perhaps the first work of puppet animation, featuring a cast composed of dead bugs.| The Public Domain Review
Overlooked kaleidoscopic images of nature painted directly onto glass.| The Public Domain Review
A grand, submarine entertainment in the form of a children’s book.| The Public Domain Review
After proclaiming himself the direct descendant of a 12th-century Crusader king, the Armenian priest and educator Ambroise Calfa hit upon an ignoble scheme: grant knighthood to anyone willing to pay. Jennifer Manoukian recovers the cunning exploits of this forgotten 19th-century conman, whose initially honorable intentions quickly escalated into all-out fraud.| The Public Domain Review
A cultural history of ostrich eggs and the birds that lay them.| The Public Domain Review
Fourth instalment in our new series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
Illuminations of European plants by an anonymous master.| The Public Domain Review
Engravings of unusual births by an artist best known for his joyous skeletons.| The Public Domain Review
Expulsion threat from the Royal Society, in 2025 and 1775.| The Public Domain Review
The Mughal emperors in India faced a sartorial quandary: continue wearing their traditional Central Asian attire, or adopt the lighter cotton clothing of this warmer clime? Simran Agarwal considers the cultural, political, and theological implications of embracing Indic fashion, arguing that — by donning the clothing of their subjects — the Mughal emperors fashioned themselves anew.| The Public Domain Review
A work of futurology intended to be read in 1888 and judged in 2000.| The Public Domain Review
Third instalment in our new series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
Proverbial scenes about human folly painted on serving plates.| The Public Domain Review
Underwater photographs that try to capture the world from a fish’s perspective.| The Public Domain Review
As cats evolved from feral ratters into beloved Victorian companions, a nascent pet-food economy arose on the carts of so-called “cat’s meat men”. Kathryn Hughes explores the life and times of these itinerant offal vendors, their intersection with a victim of Jack the Ripper, and a feast held in the meat men’s honor, chaired by none other than Louis Wain.| The Public Domain Review
Second instalment in our new series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
The first documentary film, the first ethnographic film, as well as the first art film?| The Public Domain Review
Patchwork, tie-dye textiles comprising some of the most extraordinary examples of Andean fabric art known to us.| The Public Domain Review
A Baxter process print of Hawkins’ re-creations of prehistoric life, which still stand today.| The Public Domain Review
J.-K. Huysmans pastiche? Formative influence on Allen Ginsberg’s Howl? Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare (1922) is at turns obtuse, grotesque, and moralizing — and sought to provoke the obscenity trial of the century. Only it didn’t, quietly vanishing instead. Colin Dickey rereads this failed satire, finding a transcendent rhythm pulsing beneath the novel’s indulgent prose.| The Public Domain Review
First instalment in our new series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.| The Public Domain Review
An alphabet primer in which letters fight for a slice of apple pie.| The Public Domain Review
Illustrations after watercolours by Pauline Knip, who credited herself as the author of Dutch naturalist Coenraad Jacob Temminck’s study of columbids.| The Public Domain Review
These lavish feast scenes conceal as much as they reveal about what was once the mightiest mercantile powerhouse in Europe.| The Public Domain Review
As dissatisfaction with the old regime fermented into revolutionary upheaval in late-eighteenth century France, two architects cast off the decorative excesses of the Baroque and Rococo styles and sought out bold, new geometries. Hugh Aldersey-Williams tours the sublime and mostly unrealized designs of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, discovering utopian ideals crafted in cubes, spheres, and pyramids.| The Public Domain Review
Loose adaptations of South Slavic folktales intended to capture the imaginations of children and their parents.| The Public Domain Review
Abstract wing patterns by a scientist who loved butterflies from birth.| The Public Domain Review
19 volumes of a Dada and Surrealist–associated journal published by Francis Picabia.| The Public Domain Review
After a year of quiet labour, we are launching our new image-forward PDR sister-site!| The Public Domain Review
Each January 1st is Public Domain Day, when a new crop of works have their copyrights expire and become free to share and reuse for any purpose. Here's our highlights for 2025.| The Public Domain Review
From defenestration to bibliographic imagination, a rundown of the ten most read of what we published this year.| The Public Domain Review
By the time of Albert Kahn’s death in 1940, the French banker and philanthropist had amassed a collection of more than 72,000 autochrome photographs. Grace Linden explores the Archives de la Planète — his sprawling, global project to document and preserve the fast-changing world — and uncovers a latent nostalgia in the hyperreal hues of early color photography.| The Public Domain Review
More than forty images of the ephemeral snowman, frozen eternally in the photograph.| The Public Domain Review
A guide to vice and crime by the founder of the world’s largest private detective agency.| The Public Domain Review
Micrographs that make the minuscule world as alien as outer space.| The Public Domain Review
Our End-of-Year Fundraiser is launched, and the new postcards theme will be Home.| The Public Domain Review
Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, baffling objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his *Book of the Damned*. “For every five people who read this book“, wrote one reviewer, “four will go insane”. Joshua Blu Buhs recounts Fort’s early life, unfinished manuscripts (“X”, “Y”), and the philosophical monism that informed his research.| The Public Domain Review
Charts and maps that try to visualise the contours of heaven, the dimensions of hell.| The Public Domain Review
Account of a trip round England by the Czech writer who introduced the word “robot” to the world.| The Public Domain Review
Scatology, autophagia, and vulva-like flowers all commingle in this ornament design book of grotesques.| The Public Domain Review
The recommended cut-off dates to order from our shop by to ensure delivery in time for Dec 25th.| The Public Domain Review
Reading is a form of necromancy, a way to summon and commune once again with the dead, but in what ersatz temple should such a ritual take place? Andrew Hui tracks the rise of the private study by revisiting the bibliographic imaginations of Machiavelli, Montaigne, and W. E. B. Du Bois, and finds a space where words mediate the world and the self.| The Public Domain Review
Three essays on phallicism, anaphrodisia, and various forms of love potion.| The Public Domain Review
Woodcuts inspired by the biblical Genesis, which depict the creation of the world as a jerky, frightening cataclysm.| The Public Domain Review
An Art Nouveau reference book full of elaborate ornamentation: winged dragons, chiseled hieroglyphs, warring sea creatures.| The Public Domain Review
“As a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded” — this is the kind of life envisioned by Margaret Fuller in Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). With an ear attuned to the transcendentalist’s inimitable voice, Randall Fuller revisits the intellectual context, interviews with female prison inmates, and personal longing that informed this landmark feminist work.| The Public Domain Review
