The Public Domain Review

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a 1964 science fiction film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made. It is regularly featured in the “bottom 100″ list on the Internet Movie Database, and was featured in an episode of the 1986 syndicated series, the Canned Film Festival. It was directed by Nicholas Webster, and it stars John Call as Santa Claus. It also includes an 8-year-old Pia Zadora playing the role of one of the Martian children. The film took on newfound fame in the 1990s after being featured on an episode of the comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000. It became a holiday staple on the Comedy Central cable channel in the years following its 1991 premiere. It has since found new life again in the 2000s having been riffed by Cinematic Titanic. The movie was also featured on the current run of “Elvira’s Movie Macabre.” The plot? In a bid to make disgruntled Martian children happier, Martians kidnap Santa from Earth… (Wikipedia) 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 [...]

With December 25th fast approaching we have put together a little collection of entries for Christmas Day from an eclectic mix of different diaries spanning five centuries, from 1599 to 1918. Amid famed diarists such as the wife-beating Samuel Pepys, the distinctly non-festive John Adams, and the rhapsodic Thoreau, there are a sprinkling of daily jottings from relative unknowns – many speaking apart from loved ones, at war, sea or in foreign climes. All diaries are housed at the Internet Archive – click the link below each extract to take you to the source. 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!

Contrary to what many believe, Santa Claus as we know him today – sleigh riding, gift-giving, rotund and white bearded with his distinctive red suit trimmed with white fur – was not the creation of the Coca Cola Company. Although their Christmas advertising campaigns of the 1930s and 40s were key to popularising the image, Santa can be seen in his modern form decades before Coca Cola’s illustrator Haddon Sundblom got to work. Prior to settling on his famed red garb and jolly bearded countenance, throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Santa morphed through a variety of different looks. From the description given in Clement Moore’s A Visit from St Nicholas in 1822, through the vision of artist Thomas Nast, and later Norman Rockwell, Mr Claus gradually shed his various guises and became the jolly red-suited Santa we know today. Below we’ve put together a little pictorial guide showing his evolvement through the ages. 13TH CENTURY The name Santa Claus has his roots in the informal Dutch name for St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas (an abbreviation of Sint Nikolaas). St. Nicholas was a historic 4th-century Greek saint (from an area now in modern day Turkey) who had a reputation for [...]

To celebrate the most auspicious occasion of it being the 12th day of the 12th month of the 12th year, i.e. 12/12/12, we’ve put together a little collection of twelve pictures of people in groups of twelve. Through a mix of paintings and photographs we travel all over the world, from Central Java in Indonesia to very northern Sweden, from south-eastern Russia to the palace of Archduke Leopold Salvador of Austria. All images sourced from the very handy Wikimedia Commons category “Group portraits with 12 persons”. 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!

Top Row (left to right): Stefan Zweig; Bronislaw Malinowski; Francis Younghusband Middle Row (left to right): L.M. Montgomery; A.E.Waite; Edith Stein; Robert Musil Bottom Row (left to right): Grant Wood; Bruno Schulz; Franz Boas; Eric Ravilious Pictured above is our top pick of artists and writers whose works will, on 1st January 2013, be entering the public domain in those countries with a ‘life plus 70 years’ copyright term (e.g. most European Union members, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, etc.). An eclectic bunch have assembled for our graduation photo – including the two founding fathers of anthropology from different sides of the Atlantic, an Army officer turned “premature hippy”, the painter of one of America’s most iconic images, and a canonised Catholic saint who studied with Martin Heidegger. The unifying factor bringing them all together is that all died in the year of 1942, many sadly as a result, directly or indirectly, of the Second World War. Below is a little bit more about each of their lives (with each name linking through to their respective Wikipedia pages, if you would like to find out more). In the new year, when their works shall enter the public domain, links to [...]

Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost, directed by Walter R. Booth, is the oldest known film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel A Christmas Carol – featuring the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge confronted by Marley’s ghost and given by visions of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The film, “although somewhat flat and stage-bound to modern eyes,” according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, “was an ambitious undertaking at the time,” as, “not only did it attempt to tell an 80 page story in five minutes, but it featured impressive trick effects, superimposing Marley’s face over the door knocker and the scenes from his youth over a black curtain in Scrooge’s bedroom.” It was presented in ‘Twelve Tableaux’ or scenes and is thought to contain the first ever use of intertitles in a film. (Wikipedia) Download from Internet Archive 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!

Illustrations from a chapbook entitled The Surprising Life and most Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of the City of York, Mariner (ca.1800) as featured in John Ashton’s Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century (1882). (All images taken from the Chap-books of the eighteenth century, with facsimiles, notes, and introduction by John Ashton (1882) housed at the Internet Archive, donated by University of Pittsburgh Library System). 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!

Prison diary of Michael Dougherty, late Co. B, 13th., Pa., cavalry. While confined in Pemberton, Barrett’s, Libby, Andersonville and other southern prisons. Sole survivor of 127 of his regiment captured the same time, 122 dying in Andersonville, by C. A. Dougherty; 1908; Bristol, Pennsylvania. The diary of Michael Dougherty, a young Irish soldier in the American Civil War, kept while imprisoned in various Confederate prison camps. As Dougherty notes, in 1863 “At 5 p.m. we were overpowered, cut off from the division and 127 of our regiment, among whom was your humble servant, were compelled to surrender.” For the next 23 months moving from camp to camp Dougherty kept his secret diary noting down his experiences of daily life. Of the 127 Union soldiers taken prisoner with him, he was the sole survivor, with nearly all of them perishing at the hands of commander Captain Wirz in the notorious Andersonville, Georgia prison. Dougherty’s descriptions of the appalling conditions at Andersonville are amongst the most harrowing in the book. The book is housed at the Internet Archive, contributed by the Library of Congress. Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand [...]

“Omar Rabbi Elozor” (In English: “Said Rabbi Eliezar”), performed by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and his choir in 1919 for Edison Records. The lyrics are based on the last passage of Tractate Berakhot, from the Talmud, with a few repeats. The first line roughly translates as: “Said Rabbi Elazar, quoting Rabbi Chaninah, Scholars increase the levels of peace in the world”. Wikimedia Commons 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!

The illustrative plates from Snowflakes: a Chapter from the Book of Nature (1863), a collection of poems, extracts, anecdotes and reflections on the theme of snow and the snowflake. According to the preface of the book, apart from the first few geometrical figures at the top of the first plate, which show the primary geo- metrical forms under which the snow-vapor crystalizes, all the other forms shown are “representations of individual crystals, actually observed and sketched with the aid of the microscope”. See the full book, including various poems and extracts from literature related to snow, here in our Texts collection. For some more snowflake related content have a look at Keith C. Heidorn’s article on Wilson Bentley, “The Snowflake Man of Vermont”. (All images taken from the book Snowflakes: a chapter from the Book of Nature (1863) which is housed at the Internet Archive, contributed by the California Digital Library). 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!