The Public Domain Review

The pamphlet documents thirteen years of success since the 1774 establishment of Britain’s Humane Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Dead by Drowning.

Just a few years after The Waste Land appeared — a poem whose difficulty critics compared to some “pompous cross-word puzzle” — Edward Powys Mathers (alias: Torquemada) pioneered the cryptic: a puzzle form that, like modernist poetry, unwove language and rewove it anew. Roddy Howland Jackson reveals the pleasures and imaginative creatures lurking in Torquemada's lively grids.

Some Japanese texts use a rebus-style script for teaching the illiterate to recite the Heart Sūtra, and other sacred texts, in Chinese.

Images of a frog metamorphing into Apollo illustrating Johann Kaspar Lavater's theories of physiognomy.

Modern fitness culture finds its origins in 19th-century Stockholm, where Dr. Zander invented precursors to today's gym equipment.

Each January 1st is Public Domain Day, where a new crop of works have their copyrights expire and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose.

From Alice's Wonderland to Japanese fireworks, a rundown of the ten most read pieces we published this year.

Far from the treacherous peaks and ravines of Switzerland, Alpine cottages arose, unexpectedly, amid the hillocks and modest streams of 19th-century England. Seán Williams recovers the peculiar fad for “Little Switzerlands”, where the Romantic sublime meets countryside kitsch.

What’s wondrous about browsing the images of snowball fights gathered here is how little changes across centuries and continents.

Thanks to the Music Modernization Act passed by US Congress in 2018, all sound recordings prior to 1923 will have their copyrights expire in the US on January 1st.