The Public Domain Review

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.

Short educational film on what can be seen in the night sky through a telescope, including a look at constellations, the mountains of the moon, the planets, and the sun.

English translation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Nachtstücke published in 1816, a collection of supernatural horror short stories including his classic The Sandman.