The Public Domain Review

The excellent engravings from Johann Zahn's early and comprehensive account of the function and usage of a number of optical instruments, including the camera obscura and magic lantern.

Xavier de Maistre's delightful parody of contemporary travel-writing written while under a six-week house-arrest in Turin.

Stunning set of portraits of Norwegians in national folk costume taken by the Danish photographer Marcus Selmer.

The natural history of the world from the point of view of a personified pebble.

With his enormous hair, painted face, and dainty attire, the so-called "macaroni" was a common sight upon the streets and ridiculing prints of 1770s London. Dominic Janes explores how with this new figure — and the scandalous sodomy trials with which the stereotype became entwined — a widespread discussion of same-sex desire first entered the public realm, long before the days of Oscar Wilde.

Peddling lies in public goes back to antiquity, but it is the with the Tabloid Wars of the 19th-century when it first reached the widespread outcry and fever pitch of scandal familiar today.

We present our highlights from the lesser known corners of The Metropolitan Museum's public domain collection, now made available free from restrictions on use.

Two years after Verdi's death and two years before his own, the great Francesco Tamagno sings the death scene of Othello, Niun Mi Tema.

Yvonne Seale on a bizarre and fanciful piece of genealogical scholarship and what it tells us about identity in late 19th-century America.

Visually dazzling set of hand-drawn charts created by Du Bois, condensing an enormous amount of data on African-American life into aesthetically daring and easily digestible visualisations.