The Public Domain Review

The Principle Navigations, Richard Hakluyt's great championing of Elizabethan colonial exploration, remains one of the most important collections of English travel writing ever published. As well as the escapades of famed names such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Nandini Das looks at how the book preserves many stories of lesser known figures that surely would have been otherwise lost.

Bats galore featured on plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s visually dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

19th-century reprint, with additional introduction by James Crossley, of Thomas Potts' The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, first published in 1613.

CONJECTURES #2 — John Tresch stumbles across an unusual piece, purported to be from the pen of noted anarchist Louise Michel, telling of a cross-dressing revolutionary unhinged at the helm of some kind of sociopolitical astrolabe.

With their intricate line and often ghoulish tone, the works of Irish artist Harry Clarke are amongst the most striking in the history of illustration and stained glass design. Kelly Sullivan explores how, unknown to many at the time, Clarke took to including his own face in many of his pictures.

An unusual example of a painted photograph, in which the artist has left sections untouched by paint.

A delightfully focused study on the physics and aesthetics of a splashing drop, wit some wonderful diagrams.

Recordings made between 1905 and 1909 by Finnish opera singer Eino Rautavaara (1879–1939)

The Illustrated Catalogue of Period Ornaments Cast in Composition and Wood Fibre for Woodwork-Furniture features samples of wood carvings offered by the Decorators Supply Company of Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century. These decorative elements — so pleasingly presented in the catalogue — could be glued or nailed to furniture, ceilings, and other architectural surfaces. The catalogue would have been used not only to display the Company’s selectionâ�¦

Deriving its title from the word for "ghost story" in Japanese this is a book by scholar and translator Lafcadio Hearn in which are compiled an array of ghost stories hailing from Japan.