The Public Domain Review

After many months of secret toil and aesthetic deliberation, we are very proud to launch our brand new site — a total refurb from the ground up!

A selection of D. A. Rovinskiĭ’s collection of lubki — colorful Russian prints from the 16th through 20th century.

With her "serpentine dance" — a show of swirling silk and rainbow lights — Loie Fuller became one of the most celebrated dancers of the fin de siècle. Rhonda K. Garelick explores Fuller’s unlikely stardom and how her beguiling art embodied the era's newly blurred boundaries between human and machine.

Lorenz Stoer’s wildly imaginative depictions of polyhedral shapes and fantastical ruins intended to instruct and inspire woodworkers.

An illustrated collection of murder tales from the early 17th century, including the basis for the Jacobean play The Changeling.

A lively travelogue by William Wordsworth’s daughter Dorothy, recording her observations of the Iberian peninsula, circa 1845.

Today the Paris Catacombs are illuminated by electric lights and friendly guides. But when Félix Nadar descended into this “empire of death” in the 1860s artificial lighting was still in its infancy: the pioneering photographer had to face the quandary of how to take photographs in the subterranean dark. Allison C. Meier explores Nadar’s determined efforts (which involved Bunsen batteries, mannequins, and a good deal of patience) to document the beauty and terror of this realm of the dead.

Watercolours from an early twentieth-century book of spells depicting Persian demons associated with the zodiac.

Apocalyptic lithographs from the 19th century golden age of astrology, helmed by several astrologists writing under the name Raphael.

A collection of tales told by the Tlingit people of southeastern coastal Alaska and collected by the renowned ethnographer John Reed Swanton.