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

Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1882. Chromolithograph after a pastel drawing by astronomer, artist, and amateur entomologist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, who died on this day in 1895.

More on his life and stunning astronomical art here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-trouvelot-astronomical-drawings-1882

The Public Domain Review1h ago
The first person to discover a link between increased levels of CO2 and #globalwarming was a New Yorker named Eunice Newton Foote. Read her 1856 paper, and how she went unacknowledged for more than a century, here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-paper-to-link-co2-and-global-warming-by-eunice-foote-1856 #earthday #climatechange
The Public Domain Review6h ago

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Don Quixote amid his fantasies of chivalric romance: frontispiece to a 1863 edition of the 17th-century masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes, who died #onthisday in 1616.

More on the imagery of Don Quixote here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/picturing-don-quixote #otd

The Public Domain Review22h ago
Illustrations from Albert Robida’s La vie électrique (1890). While the flying cars have not (yet) come to pass, Robida's imagining of life 60 years in the future includes many prescient visions, such as a proto Zoom, Netflix, hyperloop + smart doorbell: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/albert-robida-la-vie-electrique
The Public Domain Review1d ago
Mark Twain died #onthisday in 1910. The best known of his books is Huckleberry Finn, not so well known is Jap Herron which, according to a woman named Emily Grant Hutchings, he dictated from beyond the grave via a ouija board... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/jap-herron-a-novel-written-from-the-ouija-board-1917 #OTD
The Public Domain Review1d ago
Extract from The Hasheesh Eater (1857) by novelist/journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Terence McKenna would describe Ludlow as "Part genius, part madman, … halfway between Captain Ahab and PT Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish": https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-hasheesh-eater-1857?utm_content=buffer93dad&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer #fourtwenty #four20
The Public Domain Review1d ago
Japanese Iris — Ogawa Kazumasa, 1896.⠀
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One of the many exquisite hand-coloured flower collotypes featured in Kazumasa's 1896 book Some Japanese Flowers. ⠀
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Many more on the site, and several of his flower photographs available in our online shop — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ogawa-kazumasa-s-hand-coloured-photographs-of-flowers-1896/
The Public Domain Review2d ago
Our essay by @ResObscura on how cannabis travelled from the streets of Machilipatnam to 17th-century London's scientific circles, including the very 1st recorded description in English of a cannabis high... https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/how-the-english-found-cannabis #Happy420 #fourtwenty #420day
The Public Domain Review2d ago
Born #onthisday in 1840, the French symbolist artist Odilon Redon. Known for his surreal and often haunting imagery, some of his most stunning works are his illustrations for Flaubert's failed masterpiece Temptation of St Anthony: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-redemption-of-saint-anthony #OTD
The Public Domain Review2d ago
Bishop's Cap Cactus. Native to the highlands of northeastern and central Mexico, it gets its name from its resemblance to a bishop's mitre. More from French botanist Charles Lemaire's Iconographie descriptive des cactées (1841) here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/illustrations-from-a-descriptive-iconography-of-cacti-1841?utm_content=buffer0e564&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer