The Public Domain Review

Does each species have an optimal form? An ideal beauty that existed prior to the Fall? These were questions that concerned both artists and breeders alike in the 17th century. Dániel Margócsy on the search for a menagerie of perfect prelapsarian geometry.

Remarkable depictions of nudibranchs from the waters of the Philippines in the early 20th century.

Babylonian and Assyrian incantations against various demons, ghouls, vampires, hobgoblins, ghosts, and evil spirits.

A vision of the world hundred years in the future, in which societies have been transformed into Quakerly perfection.

Wirt Sikes, US consul to Cardiff from 1876 to 1883, describes the mythology and traditions of Wales, a land steeped in folklore.

Wonderful examples of "fore-edge painting", where an illustration or design appears on the "fore-edge" of a book.

Expensive and laborious to produce, a single woodcut could be recycled to illustrate hundreds of different ballads, each new home imbuing the same image with often wildly diverse meanings. Katie Sisneros explores this interplay of repetition, context, and meaning, and how in it can be seen a parallel with the meme culture of today.

Ghoulish array of shapeshifting monsters from Japanese folklore.

Haeckel's stunning illustrations of medusae, in whose ethereal forms he glimpsed a reflection of his first wife, who died tragically at the age of 29.

Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the book produced after the radical philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft took her infant daughter in 1795 on an expedition through Scandinavia in search of stolen treasure.