The Public Domain Review

From the mythical Sandman, who participates in dream and vision, to an irritating grain lodged in the beachgoer’s eye, sand harbours unappreciated power, however mundane. Steven Connor celebrates this “most untrustworthy” type of matter.

Set of prints which sort mushrooms found in France and elsewhere into three classes: edible, suspect, and poisonous.

John MacGregor’s four “views” of Mont Blanc, printed in color by George Baxter, reveal a different side of the mountain when compared to well-known Romantic depictions.

This 17th-century medical treatise still puzzles researchers centuries after it was written. Was it a serpent in John Pennant’s heart? Or something more mundane?

For much of the eighteenth century, Western intellectuals chased after tritons and mermaids. Vaughn Scribner follows the hunt, revealing how humanity’s supposed aquatic ancestors became wondrous screens on which to project theories of geographical, racial, and taxonomical difference.

A 19th-century catalogue dedicated to showcasing diatoms (a type of unicellular microalgae) in all their intricate glory.

A confession from the supposed man who caused a riot at the Haymarket Theatre in 1749, when he failed to shrink himself and crawl inside of a bottle.

Educational film from Bray studios all about that “marvellous sound producing instrument, the voice box”.

Among the “human curiosities” in P. T. Barnum’s American Museum was a supposed escapee from an Ottoman harem, a figure marketed as both the pinnacle of white beauty and an exoticised other. Betsy Golden Kellem investigates the complex of racial and cultural stereotypes that made the Circassian beauty such a sideshow spectacle.

To celebrate Dante's 700th anniversary, a look at how illustrators have tackled his most enduring work.