The Public Domain Review

@publicdomainrev
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Not-for-profit project dedicated to exploring curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas — focusing on works now fallen into the public domain.

Smaller posts surface images, books, audio, and film (sourced from places like Internet Archive, Library of Congress, The Met, Rijksmusuem, Wellcome, etc.) — and we've also 300+ long-form essays (✍️ submissions welcome!)

Here we'll mostly be tooting about content on our site. 🎺

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The Public Domain Review1h ago
#OnThisDay in 1815, Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted: the most powerful in human recorded history. As well as killing 71,000, it led to Europe's "Year Without Summer", climate refugees, and the creation of Shelley's Frankenstein... https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/frankenstein-the-baroness-and-the-climate-refugees-of-1816 #otd
The Public Domain Review17h ago
The village of Eyam has long been considered a case study in self-sacrifice — the 17th-century villagers choosing to quarantine (and so suffer huge losses) in order to protect others in the region from plague. Or so the story goes. But is it a myth? https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/history-and-antiquities-of-eyam
The Public Domain Review20h ago
The Cloud, one of the many lovely illustrations by Robert Anning Bell for a 1902 edition of Shelley poems. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/poems-of-shelley-illustrated-by-robert-anning-bell-1902
The Public Domain Review22h ago
Laura Tradii spelunks through the artificial grottoes of the Italian Renaissance and their reception abroad, illuminating how these curious spaces transformed across the centuries: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/petrified-waters #longreads
The Public Domain Review1d ago
This image details the aesthetic requirements for achieving the “Ideal English Rabbit”, the benchmark of perfect (yet seemingly impossible) markings for a particular breed of rabbit first developed in the middle of the 19th century: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/in-search-of-the-impossible-the-perfect-english-rabbit
The Public Domain Review1d ago

Emblems from a unique scrapbook containing a collection of cut out emblems featured in juvenile literature. Subjects include “folly of drunkenness”, “the danger of misspending time”, and “upon a little girl’s playing with a painted baby”.

More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scrapbook-of-hand-coloured-juvenile-woodcut-emblems

The Public Domain Review1d ago

“Human Statue of Liberty” comprised of 18,000 officers and men at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, ca. 1917/18.

A “living photograph“ made by Arthur Mole and John Thomas — more here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-living-photographs-of-mole-and-thomas

The Public Domain Review2d ago
In the early 16th century Albrecht Durer produced 6 woodcuts of knot patterns, likely inspired by Mamluk decorative metalwork. Each knot is a group of intricately entwined infinity loops made up of repeating patterns that follow circular paths: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/durer-knots/
The Public Domain Review2d ago
Le Petit Journal des Refusées ran to a grand total of one issue, published in the summer of 1896. At just 16 pages, printed on wallpaper in a trapezoid shape, it purported to have only one condition for inclusion — rejection from a “leading magazine”... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/le-petit-journal-des-refusees/
The Public Domain Review2d ago
Nikolai Agnivtsev’s Little Screw (1925) — a Soviet children’s book about a modest factory screw whose importance is overlooked. Read on our site, and also watch a 1927 animated version of the story: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/little-screw/