The Public Domain Review

American fiction of the 19th century often featured a ghoulish figure, the cruel doctor, whose unfeeling fascination with bodily suffering readers found both unnerving and entirely plausible. Looking at novels by Louisa May Alcott, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville, Chelsea Davis dissects this curious character.

Colourful prints depicting the four classical elements and the four temperaments based on paintings by the Flemish artist Maerten de Vos.

A romantically tinged history of the town of Eyam, which was devastated by the bubonic plague in 1666.

Historical photographs of early Juneteenth celebrations throughout its home state of Texas and across the country.

A bone-chilling book of woodblock prints, depicting a parade of demons, by Kawanabe Kyōsai, the bad boy of 19th-century Japanese art.

The Italian poet and scholar Francesco Petrarch lived through the most deadly pandemic in recorded history, the Black Death of the 14th century, which saw up to 200 million die from plague across Eurasia and North Africa. Through the unique record of letters and other writings Petrarch left us, Paula Findlen explores how he chronicled, commemorated, and mourned his many loved ones who succumbed, and what he might be able to teach us today.

The earliest English translations of six Sanskrit plays about gods, nymphs, human sacrifice, sorcery, and love.

The Public Domain Review's Mid-Year Fundraiser is launched!

Some thoughts in light of the Black Lives Matter protests about how the PDR can do better.

Stunning set of images from a 16th-century treatise on comets.