The Public Domain Review

Remarkable collection of photographs documenting the eccentric roadside architecture and ephemera of America.

An account of the early serial killers, Burke and Hare, and the medical demand for corpses that fueled these murders.

Used by the indigenous peoples of the Americas for millennia, it was only in the last decade of the 19th century that the powerful effects of mescaline began to be systematically explored by curious non-indigenous Americans and Europeans. Mike Jay looks at one such pioneer Havelock Ellis who, along with his small circle of fellow artists and writers, documented in wonderful detail his psychedelic experiences.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám has inspired parodies by cat lovers and car lovers. But it seems to have found a special place in the hearts of golfers.

The enigmatic story of the Unicorn Tapestries, whose multifarious medieval symbolism still beguiles.

Poe’s story of a treasure hunt, revealing the fantastical writer’s hyper-rational penchant for cracking codes.

The Victorian artist and writer turns his peculiar brand of verbal and visual invention to the world of plant taxonomy.

Though the 17th-century whaling station of Smeerenburg was in reality, at its height, just a few dwellings and structures for processing blubber, over the decades and centuries a more extravagant picture took hold — that there once had stood, defying its far-flung Arctic location, a bustling urban centre complete with bakeries, churches, gambling dens, and brothels. Matthew H. Birkhold explores the legend.

Illustrations from the 19th-century physics text books of Amédée Guillemin.

Condensed and beautifully illustrated English version of the ten volume series on insects by Jean-Henri Fabre in which he brought out the beauty and drama in the lives of creatures that had hitherto been regarded with horror, if regarded at all.