The Public Domain Review

Political instability, popular unrest, and an impending pandemic? Welcome to France in the early 1830s. Vlad Solomon explores what made Parisiens laugh in a moment of crisis through the prism of a vaudeville play.

A second life? To live again? Fyodor Dostoevsky survived the uncanny pantomime of his own execution to be “reborn into a new form”. Here Alex Christofi gives these very words a kind of second life, stitching primary source excerpts into a “reconstructed memoir” — the memoir that Dostoevsky himself never wrote.

In The Letter H, Alfred Leach passionately defends the aspirated aitch in words like "herb".

Frances Wilson review's our project for a feature in this week's Times Literary Supplement

These designs capture a period of cultural change in Japan, when the kimono became increasingly associated with national mythmaking and tradition.

Mellan's pièce de résistance: an engraving of Christ incised with a single, spiralling line.

William Baillie-Grohman’s text on the art of hunting reproduces 243 illustrations and 400 years of arcane knowledge related to the pursuit of animals.

Can a person’s experiences on earth alter how they perceive the stars? Lauren Collee peers through the telescope of Anton Pannekoek, the Dutch astronomer whose politics informed his human approach to studying the cosmos.

The final plate from London: A Pilgrimage — a striking vision of a visitor sketching a capital in ruins.

Ten folktales, translated from Swahili by George W. Bateman, showcasing the rich tradition of storytelling in Zanzibar.