The Public Domain Review

A type of woodblock print known as namazu-e, these images involve a myth that earthquakes were caused by the movements of a great catfish.

The oldest American children's book still in print, Wanda Gág's classic opens onto surprisingly political themes.

Eleven lithographs of Java from drawings by an eccentric Dutch colonial explorer who believed elevation equals greatness.

According to his memoirs, Eugène-François Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun). Working on the other side of the law, he apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founded the first criminal investigation bureau — staffed mainly with convicts — and, when he was later fired, the first private detective agency. He was one the fathers of modern criminology and had a rap sheet longer than his very tall tales. Who was Vidocq? Daisy Sainsbury investigates.

A genre-defying work by the creator of Peter Pan about the pleasures of smoking.

Beginning in 1905, one star-studded song-publishing company would push the aesthetic limits of how Black popular music was shown to the public.

Prints made using a technique known as blackwork which flourished from the 1580s to the 1620s.

In the public domain at last, Steamboat Willie debuted both Mickey Mouse and cartoon synchronised sound to a widespread audience.

Soon after Clementina Hawarden began taking photographs in the mid-19th century, her eye caught on doubles, reflections, her daughters glimpsed in the mirror. Stassa Edwards examines the role that reproduction — photographic, biological — plays in this oeuvre, and searches for the only person not captured clearly: Hawarden herself.

A compilation of silhouette portraits by the artist Ochiai Yoshiiku (1833–1904), which includes short biographies, picture riddles, and poems.