The Public Domain Review

A chapter from Charles Babbage’s The Life of a Philosopher railing against noise pollution in 19th-century London.

Artwork by the famous foundling Kaspar Hauser, ranging from pen-and-ink self-portraits to watercolour studies of fruit and flowers.

Vivid retellings of Korean folktales by an American scholar and Protestant minister, including several stories about the sprite Tokgabi.

From infographics to digital renders, today's scientists have ready access to a wide array of techniques to help visually communicate their research. It wasn't always so. Gregorio Astengo explores the innovations employed in early issues of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, the world's first scientific journal — new forms of image making which pushed the boundaries of 17th-century book printing.

Alphabets from across the ages, drawn and collected by the French paleographer Joseph-Balthazar Sylvestre.

Early Dutch illuminated manuscript containing imaginative images of both real and fantastic creatures.

A criti-fictional course-syllabus from the year 2070 — a bibliographical meteor from the other side of a “Remote Revolution”.

A lighthearted but serious-minded anthology of American writings against censorship written during the Prohibition era in America, including pieces by Dorothy Park, Ben Hecht, and Ruth Hale.

The diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, published after her death from tuberculosis aged just 25, won the aspiring painter the fame she so longed for but failed to achieve while alive. Sonia Wilson explores the importance of the journal — one of the earliest bids by a woman to secure celebrity through curation of “personal brand” — and the shape it gave to female ambition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Controversial early photograph of a battle site during the Crimean War, taken by the British artist Roger Fenton.