The Public Domain Review

Volume 1 of the 6th edition of Samuel Johnson’s epic achievement A Dictionary of the English Language, published a year after his death in 1785.

“When I said I wanted a crowbar…” AND THE WINNER IS… FIRST PLACE “When I said I wanted a crowbar…” (submitted by Ollie Mustill, from London, UK) SECOND PLACE “When you can snatch a bird out of the sky by skewering it with a blunt pole, your training will be complete, Fido-san.” (submitted by John Durvin, from Atlanta, U.S.A) THIRD PLACE “These new magic sticks are rubbish – all mine does is attract crows. How's yours worked out?” (submitted by Cambridge Caption, @camcaption) Many congratulations to Ollie Mustill from London, UK, for providing the winning caption and being the well deserved recipient of a Public Domain Review tote bag! Didn’t win this time? Worry not, try your hand again, in the Caption Competition #3 to be launched next week! Learn more about The Public Domain Review Caption Competition by visiting the main competition page HERE. HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP […]

“Ah! fors’è lui” and “Sempre libera” from Act I of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata performed by the Spanish singer Lucrezia Bori in August 1910 for Edison Records. Verdi’s opera in 3 acts has a libretto penned by Francesco Maria Piave and is based on La Dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Housed at: Internet Archive Underlying Work: PD 70 & PD 50 Years | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: VBR MP3 HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new article and a digest of the most recent collection items. Simply add your […]

A small pamphlet (in the series "Little journeys to the homes of great musicians") on the life of the Italian composer Guiseppe Verdi, beginning with a fictionalised account of his childhood meeting with his early patron Signior Barezzi and his eldest daughter Margherita, with whom Verdi ended up falling in love.

A selection of pages from a remarkable book produced sometime in the 1890s, an album of full-page colour illustrations (what look to be chromolithographs) of landmark sites in the “Holy Land”, opposite to which are mounted arrangements of dried flowers picked from the location shown. The album is bound in boards of olive wood with inlaid border and leather spine. It was produced and sold by the publisher Boulos Meo at his antique shop at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. See more over at The Getty Research Institute. The Getty Research Institute Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: Right click on image or see source for higher res versions HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP […]

Four photographs depicting dramatic scenes from an "auto polo" match, a version of polo played using cars rather than horses. The sport - thought to have been invented as a publicity stunt by a Ford automobile dealer from Topeka to sell Model Ts - was popular at fairs, exhibitions and sports venues across the United States and several areas in Europe from 1911 until the late 1920s.

This October marks 300 years since the birth of French Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot. Although perhaps best known for co-founding the Encylopédie, Philipp Blom argues for the importance of Diderot's philosophical writings and how they offer a pertinent alternative to the Enlightenment cult of reason spearheaded by his better remembered contemporaries Voltaire and Rousseau.

Jo Pugh, researcher at the UK National Archives, explores the newly digitised letters of former British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his sister Hester, and how their contents shed an intimate light on one of the most politically influential families in British history.

A series of animated GIFs excerpted by Okkult Motion Pictures from the French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie. Made in 1908, this hand-drawn animation is considered by many film historians to be the very first animated cartoon. Despite appearances it is not created on a blackboard but rather on paper, the blackboard effect achieved by shooting each of the 700 drawings onto negative film. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid-19th century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images on to surrounding walls. You can see the full film featured in our Films collection here. See more creations from Okkult Motion Pictures here in our Animated GIFs Collection. Okkult Motion Pictures is the brainchild of Marco Calabrese and Alessandro Scali from Turin, Italy. With the Excerpts project, Okkult Motion Pictures aims to bring to light the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright moving images occulted in Internet archives, through a series of animated gifs. A digital archivalism project for the diffusion of open knowledge. Okkult Motion Pictures official website: / Facebook / Twitter All Okkult animated GIFs published here under a CC-BY-SA license. HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a […]

An animated film by French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator Émile Cohl. It is one of the earliest examples of hand-drawn animation, and considered by many film historians to be the very first animated cartoon.