Wednesday 20 July 2016 at 17:37
The first essay in a two-part series in which Lily Ford explores how balloon flight transformed our ideas of landscape. We begin with a look at the unique set of images included in Thomas Baldwin's Airopaidia (1786) — the first real overhead aerial views.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/07/20/for-the-sake-of-the-prospect-experiencing-the-world-from-above-in-the-late-18th-century/
Tuesday 19 July 2016 at 19:45
Examples of Singerie, from the French for Monkey Trick, a genre of art in which monkeys are depicted aping human behaviour.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-singerie-monkeys-acting-as-humans-in-art/
Thursday 14 July 2016 at 17:08
A vision of the future from General Motors created to champion their "Highways and Horizons" exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/to-new-horizons-1940/
Wednesday 13 July 2016 at 17:25
An account of being confined in Ticehurst, a private asylum in Victorian Britain, by the author Herman Charles Merivale.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/my-experiences-in-a-lunatic-asylum-1879/
Wednesday 29 June 2016 at 16:51
Victorian sexuality is often considered synonymous with prudishness, conjuring images of covered up piano legs and dark ankle-length skirts. Historian Matthew Green uncovers a quite different scene in the sordid story of Holywell St, 19th-century London's epicentre of erotica and smut.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/29/the-secret-history-of-holywell-street-home-to-victorian-londons-dirty-book-trade/
Tuesday 28 June 2016 at 17:48
Images from an exquisitely illustrated Persian translation, thought to hail from 17th-century Mughal India, of Zakariya al-Qazwini's medieval treatise on all things wondrous.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/marvels-of-things-created-and-miraculous-aspects-of-things-existing/
Wednesday 22 June 2016 at 12:50
Illustrated by George Cruikshank among others, a collection of word, number, and picture puzzles in the form of enigmas, conundrums, acrostics, and a series of incredibly tricky rebuses.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/guess-me-1879/
Tuesday 21 June 2016 at 16:36
Collection of stellated and uniform polyhedra belonging to Max Brückner , a German geometer.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/max-bruckners-collection-of-polyhedral-models-1900/
Wednesday 15 June 2016 at 18:34
It is 200 years since The Year Without a Summer, when a sun-obscuring ash cloud — ejected from one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history — caused temperatures to plummet the world over. Gillen D’Arcy Wood looks at the humanitarian crisis triggered by the unusual weather, and how it offers an alternative lens through which to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a book begun in its midst.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/15/frankenstein-the-baroness-and-the-climate-refugees-of-1816/
Tuesday 14 June 2016 at 13:45
Fine specimen of a 19th-century seaweed album, in which marine algae is rendered into designs, bouquets, and even sometimes intricate little scenes.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/album-of-seaweed-pictures-1848/