The Public Domain Review

William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers (1879–1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world’s best-known celebrities of the interwar period and by the mid-30s was internationally known as a leading political wit and top-paid Hollywood movie star. At the peak of his success, in 1935, he died when a small airplane he was travelling in crashed in Alaska. He joked about his own early death: When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident like.” I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. In this recording Rogers turns his satirical wit to the world of bankers. (Wikipedia) MP3 Download Internet Archive Link 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 details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!

Images from an 18th century Italian book entitled Scoperta della chironomia, ossia, Dell’arte di gestire con le mani by Vicenzo Requeno, a Spanish monk living in Italy. The book examines the gestural techniques as recounted in various Greek and Latin authors, concentrating (as illustrated in the images below) on representing numbers with the hand. (All images taken from Scoperta della chironomia, ossia, Dell’arte di gestire con le mani (1797) housed at the Internet Archive, donated by the Getty Research Institute). 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 details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!

In 1911 the soon-to-be poet laureate Robert Bridges published the poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben, a school friend who had drowned to death at the age of 19 almost half a century earlier. Carl Miller looks at Bridges’ lengthy introduction in which he tells of the short and tragic life of the boy with whom fellow poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was reportedly besotted. Popular success came late in life to Robert Bridges—not that he much cared. When the journalists finally descended on his house in the summer of 1913 he responded first with indifference; and then not at all, leaving their importuning knocks unanswered. One might suspect that he had learned to hate the press from Tennyson, whose grand performance as Poet and Sage had burdened the Victorians of Bridges’s generation with an interpretation of the role whose hoary magic they could never quite forget, however much they’d come to hate the trick; but Bridges’s own reserve was deeply felt and honestly acquired. He was born in 1844 into a wealthy family of the Kentish gentry, and as such he had no need of ever living by his pen. He loved poetry but studied medicine, believing that a physician’s practice [...]

Stevenson’s baby book, being the record of the sayings and doings of Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, son of Thomas Stevenson, C.E. and Margaret Isabella Balfour or Stevenson; 1922; John Howell / J.H. Nash, San Francisco . A remarkable record of the first few years of author Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, as noted down by his mother in a “Baby Book”. The book featured above, published in 1922, consists of a facsimile of the original handwritten baby book followed by a transcription. Amid various baby-related milestones, such as first teeth, crawl, walk, etc., we hear reports of a young “Lou” (also called “Boulihasker, Smoutie, Baron Broadnose, Signor Sprucki,.. Maister Sprook”) first engaging with and questioning the world around him… here’s a few little golden snippets: When 1 year old… Jan 13th: Smout gives up his forenoon sleep and calls books “oufs” because he expects to find pictures of dogs in them. 3 years old… April 17th: When Smout was drawing pictures he said “I have drawed a man’s body, shall I do his soul now?” 4 years old… January 10th : When Lou saw the sun looking red he said “It’s just like a great big orange thrown up into the [...]

Plates from a “Description of the Brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S” published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1909). Credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs, Charles Babbage is considered to be the “father of the computer”. See the description of the brain here in our Texts collection. (All images taken from the book housed at the Internet Archive, donated by the Royal Society). 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 details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!

“Description of the Brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S”, by V. Horsley in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character (1896-1934); 1909; Royal Society of London. Charles Babbage, (1791–1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the “father of the computer”, Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. Babbage himself decided that he wanted his brain to be donated to science upon his death. In a letter accompanying the donation, his son Henry wrote: I have no objection…to the idea of preserving the brain…Please therefore do what you consider best…[T]he brain should be known as his, and disposed of in any manner which you consider most conducive to the advancement of human knowledge and the good of the human race. Half of Babbage’s brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, the other half is on display in the Science Museum in London. See images of Babbage’s brain taken from the last pages of the report here in our Images collection. The book is [...]

Universal newsreel from 1962 looking at the 1st year anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Download from Internet Archive Note this film is in the public domain in the US, but may not be in other jurisdictions. Please check its status in your jurisdiction before re-using. 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 details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!

“The Temple of Flora” is the third and final part of Robert John Thornton’s New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus, considered by many to be the greatest of all flower books. It consists of a series of sumptuous depictions of flowers notable for their epic and unusual settings. Interwoven amongst the images are various descriptions, histories and poetic odes regarding the flowers featured. The first plates were engraved by Thomas Medland in May 1798 from paintings by Philip Reinagle. Between 1798 and 1807 they produced a total of thirty-three coloured plates, engraved in aquatint, stipple and line. Others engravers included Joseph Constantine Stadler working from the painting of Peter Charles Henderson. When he planned the project, Thornton had decided to publish seventy folio-size plates. Lack of interest from the general public spelled disaster for the scheme, and the holding of a lottery could not save it from financial ruin, neither did a page in the work dedicated to the spouse of George III, Queen Charlotte, patroness of botany and the fine arts. (Wikipedia) (All images taken from New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus (1807) housed at the Internet Archive, donated by Missouri [...]

Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of President at the time Thomas Woodrow Wilson, singing the U.S. national anthem “Star Spangled Banner” in 1915. After her mother’s death in 1914 Margaret served as the First Lady of the United States until her father’s second marriage in 1915. She would go on to make several recordings around 1918. In 1938 she travelled to the ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India where she chose to stay for the rest of her life. She was later known in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as ‘Nistha’ (Sanskrit for “sincerity”). In 1942, she and the scholar Joseph Campbell edited the English translation of the classical work on the Hindu mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda, which was published in 1942. She was to die two years later, 6 years after entering the ashram, of a kidney infection aged 57. (Wikipedia) The lyrics of the “The Star-Spangled Banner” come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay 200 years ago this year in [...]

Artificial Fireworks, by John Maskall; 1785; (no publisher information). Beautiful hand-written and illustrated treatise on firework design and manufacture, including ‘blue-prints’ for the devices and explosive recipes. The book is housed at the Internet Archive, donated by the Getty Research Institute . 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 details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!