The Public Domain Review

The Continuous Bath.

Illustration from Practical Hydrotherapy: A Manual for Students and Practitioners (1909) by Dr Curran Pope. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/practical-hydrotherapy-1909

One of a great series of drawings depicting balloonfish and pufferfish made during the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/d... #fishfriday

Attraction (1896) by Edvard Munch, who died #onthisday in 1944.

Prints of this, and a few others, in our online shop here: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints/artist/edvard-munch

Paradiso, Canto XIV. Dante and Beatrice move into the fifth heaven — an illustration from 1880 by Gustave Doré, who died three years later on this day in 1883.

More Dante illustrations by Doré (and others) here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dante-divine-comedy-in-art

Earliest known photograph of a snowman, ca. 1854, taken by Mary Dillwyn (most likely in Wales).

The first image in our post collecting photographs of snowmen through history (1854–1950) — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/photographs-of-snowmen/

With thanks for the heads up to @flickrfdn.bsky.social who house the collection from @aucklandmuseum.bsky.social

A few of the 350+ slides used by theosophist and meteorologist Clement Lindley Wragge in various magic lantern lectures, with titles like: “A Voyage through the Universe” (1902), and “The Endless Universe and Eternal Life” (1918–22). More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/w...

Born in Poland #onthisday in 1884, Bronislaw Malinowski. Looking at entries in his infamous diary, Michael W. Young explores the personal crisis plaguing the anthropologist at the end of his first major stint of ethnographic immersion: publicdomainreview.org/essay/w...

Lepus leaping.

From the Aratea, a 9th-century manuscript on astronomy featuring constellations comprised of words. More here: https://buff.ly/34uIsEa

Cybernetic Attention: All Watched over by Machines We Learned to Watch Before the attention economy consumed our lives, “pursuit tests” devised by the US military coupled man to machine with the aim of assessing focus under pressure. D. Graham Burnett explores these devi...

NEW ESSAY — D. Graham Burnett explores early 20th-century devices used by the US military for assessing focus under pressure, finding a pre-history of the lab research that has relentlessly worked to slice and dice the attentional powers of human beings: publicdomainreview.org/essay/cybern...

Erica X Eisen on the overlapping forces at play in Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky’s spectacular (and flawed) colour photographs of the Russian Empire: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-search-of-true-color #longreads

Final print in The Ascent of Mont-Blanc (ca. 1855) made by George Baxter based on the sketches of John MacGregor. Titled "The Summit", it shows a couple of explorers enjoying a drink, while two others have almost collapsed from exhaustion: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mont-blanc-ascent

In her essay “Rhapsodies in Blue”, Paige Hirschey explores the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/anna-atkins-cyanotypes/ #longreads #photography

José Guadalupe Posada, the artist who'd become most associated with the Day of the Dead, had his very own day of death #onthisday in 1913. He was best known for his "calaveras", highly politicised illustrations featuring skulls and skeletons: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t... #otd

Sasha Archibald explores the love and longing contained in the pressed and illustrated pages of 19th-century seaweed albums, including “the most ambitious album of all” by Charles F. Durant: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/love-and-longing-in-the-seaweed-album #seaweed

Born #onthisday in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe. Many illustrators have tackled Poe's dark and macabre tales but perhaps none so hauntingly and brilliantly as Irish artist Harry Clarke. See his exquisite imagery for Poe's Tales of Mystery & Imagination: publicdomainreview.org/collection/h... #otd

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: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/iris

"Full fathom five…" by Edmund Dulac, from a 1915 edition of The Tempest.

From our essay by @drgregorytate on the attempts of a Victorian polymath to reconcile the languages of poetry and science: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-poetry-of-victorian-science

Embroidered front and back covers of a 1791 edition of Robinson Crusoe — featured in our essay "Pens and Needles", on the Victorian revival of embroidered book covers: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/pens-and-needles-reviving-book-embroidery-in-victorian-england

First published in 1836 by the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti-Slavery Almanac was an attempt to bring awareness about slavery to 19th-century America: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-american-anti-slavery-almanac-for-1838

Died #onthisday in 1834, Giovanni Aldini, the Italian "galvanist" whose experiments in animating the muscles of the dead with electricity inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Read more in our essay by Sharon Ruston: publicdomainreview.org/essay/t...

Born #onthisday in 1574, the great occult philosopher Robert Fludd. Pictured here his image of the "spiritual brain". More about the man and his philosophy in our essay by Urszula Szulakowska: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/robert-fludd-and-his-images-of-the-divine #otd

Uncharacteristically ominous title card from The Sky, a wonderful educational film from 1928 looking at the wonders of the night sky to be seen through a telescope, including constellations, the moon, the planets, and the sun. Watch it here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

From our Conjectures series... @BredFoks with a story about holes, ice, night, the proximity of the afterlife, and the first underwater photographic portrait... https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/portrait-of-a-scaphander

Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote was first published #onthisday in 1605. It would become one of the best-loved and most frequently illustrated books in the history of literature. Read more in Rachel Schmidt's essay "Picturing Don Quixote" — publicdomainreview.org/essay/p... #OTD

Photograph of Princeton students after a snowball fight between freshman and sophomores, 1893.

More images of snowball fights through history here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/snowball-fights

A collaboration with time: beautifully decayed and damaged daguerreotypes from the studio of one of the most celebrated 19th-century photographers Mathew Brady, who died #onthisday in 1896: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/decayed-daguerreotypes

It's #NationalHatDay! Here's some excellent headwear (and moustaches) from an album of 19th-century Ottoman fashion. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/19th-century-album-of-ottoman-fashion/

A look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the "modern" book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914

Inventor Robert Pittis Scott's Cycling Art, Energy, and Locomotion (1889) offers a whimsical and illustrated tour through the previous century of “man-motor locomotion” including a second half dedicated to unusual patents: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cycling-art