Wednesday 11 October 2017 at 13:32
Feuding impresarios, a white-but-not-white-enough elephant, and racist ads for soap — Ross Bullen on how a bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race, and inadvertently laid bare the ideological constructions at their heart. The Lydian Monarch had been sighted from Fire Island and was expected in Jersey […]
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/10/11/race-and-the-white-elephant-war-of-1884/
Thursday 5 October 2017 at 19:09
The published correspondence of Ignatius Sancho, the first known Black Briton to vote in a British election, and the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/letters-of-the-late-ignatius-sancho-an-african-1784/
Wednesday 4 October 2017 at 21:28
CONJECTURES #6 — Kant in Sumatra? The Third Critique and the cosmologies of Melanesia? Justin E. H. Smith on the strange worlds revealed in a typesetter's error.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-primordial-gound/
Tuesday 3 October 2017 at 19:54
Remarkable collection of sketches, drawings and watercolours left to us by Adolph Metzner, during his three years of service with the 1st German, 32nd Regiment Indiana Infantry.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-civil-war-sketches-of-adolph-metzner-1861-64/
Wednesday 27 September 2017 at 14:53
The destruction of Atlantis, cataclysmic comets, and a Manhattan tower made entirely from concrete and corpse — Carl Abbott on the life and work of a Minnesotan writer, and failed politician, with a mind primed for catastrophe.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/09/27/ignatius-donnelly-recipes-for-disaster/
Wednesday 27 September 2017 at 13:12
The destruction of Atlantis, cataclysmic comets, and a Manhattan tower made entirely from concrete and corpse — Carl Abbott on the life and work of a Minnesotan writer, and failed politician, with a mind primed for catastrophe. The magnificent civilization of Atlantis shattered and plunged beneath the sea in February 1882. Or, to be more […]
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/09/27/ignatius-donnelly-recipes-for-disaster/
Wednesday 20 September 2017 at 17:17
This 1863 rendering of Perrault's classic tale, is thought to be the very first shape book, or die cut book, at least in the United States.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/little-red-riding-hood-1863/
Tuesday 19 September 2017 at 14:48
Images depicting ferruginous variation from a 19th-century geological paper, at times like some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/on-the-disposition-of-iron-in-variegated-strata-1868/
Thursday 14 September 2017 at 18:02
Short film from the US Department of the Interior emphasising the physical and mental well-being that parks can bring.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/park-conscious-1938/
Wednesday 13 September 2017 at 17:26
An early promoter and populariser of Darwin's evolutionary theory, the German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel was a hugely influential figure of the late 19th century. Bernd Brunner looks at how a trip to Sri Lanka sowed the seeds for not only Haeckel's majestic illustrations from his Art Forms in Nature, for which he is perhaps best known today, but also his disturbing ideas on race and eugenics.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2017/09/13/human-forms-in-nature-ernst-haeckels-trip-to-south-asia-and-its-aftermath/