The Public Domain Review

Adam Green talks to Creative Review about the new image book Affinities, and the concept of "originality".

The ten-volume Unai no tomo is comprised of charming woodblock prints of traditional objects of play.

Years before the Weimar Republic’s well-chronicled freedoms, the 1904 non-fiction study Berlin’s Third Sex depicted an astonishingly diverse subculture of sexual outlaws in the German capital. James J. Conway introduces a foundational text of queer identity that finds Magnus Hirschfeld — the “Einstein of Sex” — deploying both sentiment and science to move hearts and minds among a broad readership.

Over the course of a year, Thomas Carlyle supposedly transmitted this text to Dr. Wm. J. Bryan from beyond the grave.

This portrait, believed to be the work of Marie-Denise Villers, encodes questions of gender and artistry in late-eighteenth century France.

Inkblot books were part bestiary, part parlor-game séance, cataloging those creatures that seemed to crawl out of the inkwell with the slightest encouragement.

Built for his son from the scraps of daily life — matchboxes, beef bones, nutshells, and plaster — Paul Klee’s hand puppets harbour ghosts of human feelings, fragile communications from a world most adults have left behind. Kenneth Gross compares these enchanted objects to angelic figures, in Klee’s artworks and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, helping us dance as well as wrestle with their visions of innocence.

Echoing the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a composite head comprised of a tortuous tangle of écorché-like figures.

The story of Alexander the Great descending into the sea in a diving bell has led to diverse visual representations across countries, languages, and centuries.

As historical documents, the surviving editions of Harris’s List offer today’s readers a rare glimpse into London's 18th-century sex trade.