The Public Domain Review

Perhaps Georges Méliès' most famous film, and the first science fiction film in cinematic history.

Totalling more than 1000 pages this brilliantly illustrated treatise on zoology, explores ancient and fantastic legends about existing animals, as well as those at the more mythic end of the spectrum, including the Hydra, Lamia, and Mantichora.

Ava Kofman explores how the spectre of race, in particular Francis Galton's disturbing theory of eugenics, haunts the early history of fingerprint technology.

a selection of pages from Romeyn Beck Hough's epic fourteen volume work The American Woods, a collection of more than 1000 paper-thin wood samples representing more than 350 varieties of North American tree

Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach's unique self-portrait, from the perspective of his left eye.

A film noir — starring Edmond O'Brien and Pamela Britton — about a man who has been poisoned and, with only a few days left to live, sets out to find his killer.

A compendium of glimpses into the personalities and stories of more than 140 mental patients confined to the Bethlem Hospital in the early part of the 19th century.

Wonderful example of early special effects, a man is dining in a restaurant when three small human-like creatures, two men and a woman, appear from his food and drink, much to the amusement of the man at the table.

When the lost classical sculpture Laocoön and His Sons — lauded as representing the very highest ideal of art — was dug up in 1506 with limbs missing, the authorities in Rome set about restoring it to how they imagined it once to look. Monique Webber explores how it was in reproductive prints that this vision was contested, offering a challenge to the mainstream interpretation of Antiquity.

The centre of love: discovered through various emblems, gallant and facetious — a delightfully illustrated emblem book exploring all corners of seventeenth-century courtship.