The Public Domain Review

American-born Copley made a splash at London’s Royal Academy with this depiction of Brook Watson’s dramatic rescue from Havana harbour in 1749.

These complex geometrical figures and perspective drawings are preserved in a little-known manuscript at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel

Sci-fi novel of psychonautical learning long before Albert Hofmann discovered LSD.

How did Virgil’s words survive into the present? And how were they once read, during his own life and the succeeding centuries? Alex Tadel explores Graeco-Roman reading culture through one of its best-preserved and most lavishly-illustrated artefacts.

The illustrations from catalogues for Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, published by C. T. Brock and Company, the oldest fireworks manufacturer in the United Kingdom.

During the Enlightenment, when Diderot wrote his letter, blindness had become a topic of intense philosophical debate.

In this early version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we find illustrations drawn by the author Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll.

In 1838, as the United States began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue. John Tresch guides us along this strange trip southward, following the pull of its unfathomable mysteries.

The masks gathered here come from a report by Matilda Coxe Stevenson, one of the most dedicated ethnographers of Zuni at the turn of the 20th century.

An impressive compendium of British trees in etchings and words.