The Public Domain Review

Updating database... Please wait.

Edison recording of Harry E. Humphrey reading the English writer Frank Desprez’s most famous poem “Lasca”. This ballad-like piece, first published in a London magazine in 1882, tells the story of a Mexican girl and her cowboy sweetheart caught in a cattle stampede “in Texas down by the Rio Grande”. Housed at: Internet Archive | From: Library of Congress Underlying Work: PD 70 Years | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: VBR MP3 | Ogg Vorbis HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new article and a digest of the most recent collection items. Simply add your details to the […]

Coloured engravings from France’s first ice-skating manual Le Vrai Patineur (The True Skater) written by Jean Garcin, a book praised in Honoré de Balzac’s Illusions Perdues. As well as the aide of eight engraved plates, four of which are featured here, the manual details many movements and poses, putting an emphasis on artistry and grace in contrast to the more straightforward technical approach usually practised in England. The book is considered to be one of the earliest works in any language devoted entirely to ice-skating. Villanova Digital Library Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: Share Alike Download: Right click on image or see source for higher res versions HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up […]

The Wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson collected and arranged from his writings; 1904; Scott-Thaw Co., New York. A book of posthumously collected extracts from the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer, most famous for his books Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. For more RLS related material check out his “Baby Book”, a remarkable record of the first few years of his life, as noted down by his mother. Housed at: Internet Archive | From: Library of Congress Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: PDF | Kindle | EPUB | Torrent HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up […]

In August of this year The Getty announced the launch of their Open Content Program which sees more than 4500 images from their collection made available under an open license, meaning anyone can share the images freely and without restriction. We’ve spent the day trawling the thousands of images to bring you a small selection of highlights from their wonderful collection. Visit their site to get exploring yourself. The Getty Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: Right click on image or see source for higher res versions HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new […]

An animated GIF created by Okkult Motion Pictures from a stereoscopic photograph featured in the collection of the National Library of New Zealand. The photograph taken by William Williams shows his wife Lydia (dressed in black, second from left) and other women seated for tea outside their house in Napier, New Zealand. See more creations from Okkult Motion Pictures here in our Animated GIFs Collection. Okkult Motion Pictures is the brainchild of Marco Calabrese and Alessandro Scali from Turin, Italy. With the Excerpts project, Okkult Motion Pictures aims to bring to light the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright moving images occulted in Internet archives, through a series of animated gifs. A digital archivalism project for the diffusion of open knowledge. Okkult Motion Pictures official website: / Facebook / Twitter All Okkult animated GIFs published here under a CC-BY-SA license. HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : […]

In contrast to today’s rather mundane spawn of coffeehouse chains, the Lond…

CURATOR’S CHOICE #2: DANIEL HORST FROM THE RIJSKMUSEUM Daniel Horst, research associate at the Rijksmuseum, explores the controversial collection of satirical etchings published by Abraham Allard in Amsterdam ca. 1708 under the title ‘t Lusthof van Momus. One of the lesser known sub-collections of the Rijksmuseum’s impressive and rapidly growing collection of digitised works is the set of ‘history pictures’ compiled by the Amsterdam art dealer, auctioneer and publisher Frederik Muller (1817-1881). After his death in 1881 the Rijksmuseum was able to acquire this important collection of c. 25.000 prints, drawings and books illustrating the history of the Netherlands, including a remarkable series of prints published in 1713 by the Dutch printmaker Abraham Allard under the title ‘t Lust-Hof van Momus (Fig. 1). In translation the full title reads: The Court of Momus, planted with the principal crops of Mars in Europe and decorated with political emblems of the current war and embellished with elegant historical and satirical poems. The volume contains 127 prints, all of which pertain to the war between the Dutch Republic and France, part of the War of the Spanish Succession which raged in continental Europe and overseas between 1701 and 1714. Although Abraham Allard (1676-1725) […]

Nursery Lessons in Words of One Syllable; 1838; Darton and Harvey, London. A charming little illustrated book for young readers, consisting entirely of words of one syllable. Housed at: Internet Archive | From: California Digital Library Found via: Tiffany Johnson Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: PDF | Kindle | EPUB | Torrent HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new article and a digest of the most recent collection items. Simply add your details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription! Name: E-mail:

Anatomical diagram from William Carver’s Practical horse farrier, or, The traveller’s pocket companion: shewing the best method to preserve the horse in health; and likewise the cure of the most prominent diseases to which this noble animal is subject, in the United States of America : the whole being the result of nearly forty years’ experience, with an extensive practice, published in 1820. U.S. National Library of Medicine Underlying Work: PD Worldwide | Digital Copy: No Additional Rights Download: Right click on image or see source for higher res versions HELP TO KEEP US AFLOAT The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project and we rely on support from our readers to stay afloat. If you like what we do then please do consider making a donation. We welcome all contributions, big or small - everything helps! Become a Patron Small angel : £3.00 GBP - monthly Medium sized hero : £5.00 GBP - monthly Large emperor : £10.00 GBP - monthly Vast deity : £20.00 GBP - monthly Make a one off Donation SIGN UP TO THE NEWSLETTER Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new article and […]

The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Connell the Tattooed Man, by James F. O’Connell; 1845; W. Applegate, New-York. One of the main attractions at P.T. Barnum’s 1842 ‘freakshow’ American Museum was a man named James F. O’Connell, notable for his head to toe covering in tattoos, the U.S.’s first tattooed showman. To accompany his unusual appearance, the show featured O’Connell telling of how he received his tattoo during his years of captivity in the South Pacific. According to his account he became shipwrecked on the Caroline Islands and saved himself from death at the hands of the Ponapeans natives by performing a series of Irish jigs for their amusement. Though his life was spared he tells of how he was subject to a compulsory tattooing at the hands of a series of “voluptuous virgins” and how he was forced to marry the last of his tattooers. When a ship landed on the island in 1833 (some 5 years or so since his shipwreck there in the late 1820s) O’Connell left, making his way to the U.S. where he eventually ended up working in P.T.Barnum’s ‘freakshow’, telling tales of the eight day long process of tattooing he underwent and performing […]