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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 13h

Iris, circa 1630. Artist unknown, but from a Dutch series titled "Various New Tulips and other Flowers". Available as a print to buy in our online shop: publicdomainreview.org/product/iris

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 16h

In his essay “The Nightwalker and the Nocturnal Picaresque”, Matthew Beaumont explores how the introduction of street lighting to 17th-century London engendered the birth of a peculiar new literary genre: publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-ni…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 21h

Happy birthday Buster Keaton! Born #onthisday in 1895. Watch his silent classic The General from 1926: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

19th-century drugstore ad in verse, from a “commercial rhymist”. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/r…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

More than a century before the Eurostar and LeShuttle, a group of engineers and statesmen dreamed (and fretted) about connecting Britain to France with an underwater tunnel. @PM_Keeling drills into the early history of the Channel Tunnel — publicdomainreview.org/essay/t...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My Diary in a Chinese Farm (1894), feminist and novelist Alicia Little's intimate and unique insight into rural Chinese life at the end of the nineteenth century: publicdomainreview.org/collection/m…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Cartoon portrait of artist and writer William Morris, who left this "earthly paradise" 125 years ago #onthisday. More caricatures of leading (male) 19th-century figures featured in Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day (1873): publicdomainreview.org/collection/c...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Listen to a 1919 recording of "Omar Rabbi Elozor" performed by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and his choir. The lyrics are based on the last passage of the Talmud's Tractate Berakhot (and include the line "Scholars increase the levels of peace in the world"): publicdomainreview.org/collection/o...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A native of the Kayaye village (Gambia), dressed head to toe in boughs and leaves as part of the Kongcorong ceremony. Featured in Major William Gray's 1825 account of his doomed trip through Western Africa. From our essay on failed colonial expeditions: publicdomainreview.org/essay/f...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

From Comparative Osteology (1821–38) with illustrations by the Italian-born German naturalist Edouard Joseph d’Alton, an artist and art history professor whose students included a young Karl Marx. More of his wonderful images here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/c…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

October is #BatAppreciationMonth! Here they are being fully appreciated in plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), published in 1904. More about the image, including details of the line-up, here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Socialist, theosophist + women's rights activist Annie Besant was born #onthisday 1847. Read @ResObscura on her book Thought-Forms (1901), an intriguing work grounded in the theory that ideas, emotions, and even events, can manifest as visible auras publicdomainreview.org/essay/v... #OTD

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Scene representing #October, from the 15th-century Très Riches Heures — taking place at what would now be the centre of Paris (a block or two south of l'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts). More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/l…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It's #InternationalCoffeeDay! Celebrate with a read of @drmatthewgreen's essay on the halcyon days of the 17th and 18th-century London coffeehouse, a haven for caffeine-fuelled debate and innovation which helped to shape the modern world: publicdomainreview.org/essay/t...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

NEW ESSAY — “Philip Sidney and the Extreme (Dis)graces of the Parenthesis”, in which Florence Hazrat introduces us to the uncontested early modern king of brackets and to his romance Arcadia, which abruptly ends, like its author’s life, hanging on a parenthesis publicdomainreview.org/essay/philip...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

From the early 1400s, a lavishly illustrated vellum scroll (almost 18 ft long!) of the works of English physician John of Arderne, one of the founding figures of modern surgery: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus (1827) — The earliest English translations of six Sanskrit plays about gods, nymphs, human sacrifice, sorcery, and love: buff.ly/3AZgsaX

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A few of the seven etchings that comprise Käthe Kollwitz's Peasants’ War series (ca. 1901–1908) about the innate dignity, courage, and strength of the poor. More in our latest post here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/k…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Image from an 18th-century pattern book consisting of 36 ink drawings showing precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the #Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Born #onthisday in 1547, Miguel de Cervantes, author of one of the most illustrated books of all time, #DonQuixote. Read Rachel Schmidt on how the varying approaches to illustrating it have reflected + impacted its reading through the centuries: publicdomainreview.org/essay/p... #otd

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Lydia Pyne on Yvette Borup Andrews' photographs from the American Museum of Natural History’s First and Second Asiatic Zoological Expeditions of the 1910s: publicdomainreview.org/essay/yvette…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Tragedy of the Seas (1841) — a colourful compendium of thirty-seven nautical catastrophes that took place in bodies of water around the world between 1803 and 1840: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Letters of the alphabet (plus “&”) arrange themselves around a pie, to each receive an equal portion. Illustration from The Tragical Death of a Apple-Pye (ca. 1793), subject of our post: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The letter "O" from Joris Hoefnagel's Guide to the Construction of Letters (1595), a work designed to aid and inspire calligraphers. Each letter is surrounded by an array of symbolically charged motifs. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/h...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

With his Vera Historia, the 2nd-century satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote the 1st detailed account of a trip to the moon in the Western tradition and, some argue, also one of the earliest science fiction narratives. Aaron Parrett explores: publicdomainreview.org/essay/l...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The "Scare-Fox", 1910. A mechanical device, designed to keep foxes away from pheasants: publicdomainreview.org/collection/s…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Born #onthisday in 1641, the very aptly-named Nehemiah Grew — an English botanist who was the first to depict the inner structure and function of plants in all their splendorous intricacy. ⠀ More of his images here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/n... #otd

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

#OnThisDay in 1940, the philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin died by suicide in the Spanish border town of Portbou whilst on the run from the Nazis. Here's Anca Pusca on the relevance of Benjamin’s oeuvre in a digital age: publicdomainreview.org/essay/o... #otd

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Recording by the legendary musicologist Alan Lomax of Abner Boggs singing a heartrending rendition of the popular murder ballad The False Young Man in 1937: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Who's drunk? One of the so-called “shadow pictures” from Temperance Stories and Sketches (1879) by Edward Carswell — a collection tales, poems, and illustrations warning readers against the perils of alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Born #onthisday in 1889, CK Scott Moncrieff, whose epic English translation of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu is widely hailed as a masterpiece in its own right. His rendering of the title is not, however, considered a high point... publicdomainreview.org/essay/l... #otd

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

“Progress in Play: Board Games and the Meaning of History”, Alex Andriesse on the world of 18/19th-century board games in which players progress chronologically through history itself: publicdomainreview.org/essay/progre…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Croatian Tales of Long Ago — a seminal collection of short stories by the acclaimed children's author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. The illustrations in this 1922 edition are by Croatian artist Vladimir Kirin: publicdomainreview.org/collection/c…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Shadows from the Walls of Death (1874) gathers real swaths of poisonous arsenic wallpaper sourced from stores across Michigan. Originally printed in a run of 100 copies, only 6 remain due to recipients fearfully destroying their copies: publicdomainreview.org/collection/k…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Burlesquing the Augustan era’s fixation on classical tradition, John Gay's Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) renders practical advice for perambulating the capital into oftentimes absurd, hexametric verse: publicdomainreview.org/collection/g…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“God the Creator”, opening illustration to a stunning 14th-century manuscript known as the Holkham Bible Picture Book. Explore more of its glorious depictions of bible scenes here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/h…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Cleopatra tableau in New Zealand, 1914, captured in the subtle hues of an autochrome, early colour photo technique. See more autochromes from early 20th-century New Zealand in the collection of the Te Papa museum: publicdomainreview.org/essay/autoch…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Miniatures, likely by Alī Khan, illustrating an 1825 manuscript on Indian customs, culture, and caste, penned entirely in Persian by James Skinner, an enigmatic figure of the early British Raj. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/j…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“Beastly Clues: T. S. Eliot, Torquemada, and the Modernist Crossword” in which @roddyhj reveals the literary pleasures and imaginative creatures lurking in the lively grids of cryptic #crossword pioneer Torquemada: publicdomainreview.org/essay/beastl…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Amongst the assorted curiosities described in Olaus Magnus' 1555 tome on Nordic life was the morse — a hirsute, fearsome walrus-like beast, that was said to snooze upon cliffs while hanging by its teeth: publicdomainreview.org/essay/d...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The "Bed Series" was a set of intimate portraits of lesbian sex workers made by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1890s behind the scenes at a Parisian brothel. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Card from the autumn "suit" of the Astronomia playing card deck, 1829. Featuring 3 other seasonal suits the pack was used to play two games — Conjunction and Combination — which were trumps-based, similar to Whist. More images of the cards here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a... #autumn

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Happy first day of autumn!!! (In the northern hemisphere at least... and those west of UTC-02:00). ⁠ Pictured here: Maple Trees at Mama (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige. More works by Hiroshige → publicdomainreview.org/collection/u…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871.⠀ ⠀ One of several hummingbird / orchid paintings by Martin Johnson Heade. This and a couple of other Heade works available as prints in our online shop here: publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-ar…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Was the #FrenchRevolution the work of a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati? One man thought so. @MikeJayNet explores: publicdomainreview.org/essay/darkne…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“Divining the Witch of York: Propaganda and Prophecy” — @WithEdSimon on the 16th-century prophetess-cum-witch Mother Shipton, Yorkshire’s answer to Nostradamus: publicdomainreview.org/2018/10/24/d…

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Born #onthisday in 1866, the "father of science fiction" H. G. Wells. Read our essay by Peter J. Bowler on the writer's many musings on the future of humanity: publicdomainreview.org/essay/h-g-we… #otd

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“Frustules of Diatoms”, a cyanotype from 1870 by Austrian botany professor Julius Wiesner. Diatoms are a microalgae found in oceans, waterways, and soils, and generate about 20 to 50% of the planet's oxygen. Available as a print in our online shop: publicdomainreview.org/product/f...

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Can a person’s experiences on earth alter how they perceive the stars? In “Marxist Astronomy” @lacollee peers through the telescope of Anton Pannekoek, the Dutch astronomer whose politics informed his human approach to studying the cosmos: publicdomainreview.org/essay/m...

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