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Join NOW!At the Public Domain Review, Nandini Das revisits The Principle Navigations and argues that the massive folio of travel writings compiled by Richard Hakluyt in 1589 is more than an artifact of British colonialism. It also memorializes, “the elusive traces of those who disappeared, the disappointment of the non-event, the tedium of travel, and the absence of […]
...moreIn the first of a two-part series at the Public Domain Review, Lily Ford uses 18th century illustrations and drawings from balloonists to capture the changes in science and society brought by the first people to see the world from the sky.
...moreFears of mistaken identity and unconscious slips were crystallized in the literature of detection but emerged from a broad range of hermeneutic practices across the era, at a time in which those in power considered the borders of empire and boundaries of racial identity to be insecure. The Public Domain Review looks at the early […]
...moreHaving goaded the formerly pre-eminent Michelangelo by winning papal favour and sneaking into his as-yet unfinished Sistine Chapel, Raphael further insulted his Florentine rival in the Laocoön competition. The Public Domain Review tells the story of how the restoration of Laocoön and His Sons only further deepened the rivalry between Renaissance artists Michelangelo and Raphael.
...moreThe Public Domain Review examines the work of Elizabethan writer Robert Greene, the original Bohemian, and the first known reviewer of William Shakespeare: Greene’s chief target was “an upstart Crow,” who “supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”…He has a “tiger’s heart, wrapped in a […]
...more“Oscar,” Whistler’s barbs continued, “has the courage of the opinions… of others!” The Public Domain Review looks at the accusations of plagiarism that dogged Oscar Wilde’s oft-quoted career, and his highly-publicized feud with the American artist James McNeill Whistler.
...moreCertain people, Barrett decided, were… exquisitely attuned to vibrations that others could not perceive, to “forces unrecognized by our senses.” He considered these persons able to receive messages from super-normal spirit-beings existing in an intermediate state between the physical and the spiritual—a phenomenon that might account for telepathy. The Public Domain Review examines the history […]
...moreAt the Public Domain Review, Sharon Ruston examines contemporary influences on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, specifically with regards to scientific developments in discovering the line between life and death.
...moreAt the Public Domain Review, read about Thomas Pynchon’s oldest colonial ancestor, who also happened to be a writer—though he was much less successful and much more heavily censored.
...moreEdison floods the world with light; biologists discover germs and defy Death; botanists grow tropical plants in Parisian glass-houses and affront Nature with hot-house orchids; the phonograph and the cinema fold Time and Space for the masses. And for some reason bicycles become rather popular. The Public Domain Review looks at the death of Victorian […]
...moreThis, then, is the story of how one of Britain’s most promising, skilled explorers struggled to find a place in Victorian science, unable to shake his love for the underdogs of the plant world. The Public Domain Review shares the story of Richard Spruce, a Victorian botanist who never hit the big time.
...moreThis is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a bronchial spasm. For the Public Domain Review, Brett Beasley examines Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City, widely considered to be the first science fiction novel about an urban apocalypse.
...moreNothing, in the opinion of a New Yorker, can exceed boiled sheep’shead served up at a sumptuous dinner. . . This noble fish . . . the feats of hooking and pulling him in, furnish abundant materials for the most pleasing and hyperbolical stories. The Public Domain Review examines Samuel L. Mitchill’s nearly obsessive Report, in […]
...moreAt the Public Domain Review, Abigail Walthausen looks at the work of Arthur Heming, a Canadian colorblind painter who lived in an artist colony in Connecticut.
...moreTo many a browser upon a bookstall, the name Aristotle in the title meant—nudge nudge wink wink—a book about sex. For the Public Domain Review, Mary Fissell examines Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a 17th-century sex manual that made the ancient philosopher’s name a dirty word.
...moreYou could argue that Machiavelli’s entire worldview was comic, but comic in a peculiar way: ironic, wry, a little melancholy, punctuated by an earthy vulgarity that, these days, would get him thrown off a university faculty in a minute. The Public Domain Review takes a look at the more humorous side of Machiavelli’s writing.
...moreThe Public Domain Review takes a trip through the world of imaginary musical instruments, including sound houses, steam-powered bands, and the infamous cat piano.
...moreIn fact, as far as his daily life went, “Lewis Carroll” was a complete non-person. Charles was always known personally only by his real name, letters directed to the pseudonym were returned unanswered, and he would walk away if strangers dared to mention “Alice” in his presence. For The Public Domain Review, Jenny Wolff examines […]
...moreIn the seventeenth century, country folk believed that the badger had legs on one side shorter than the other – the consensus was that the short legs were on the left. The Public Domain Review looks at Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a bestiary written by author and physician Sir Thomas Browne that sought to dispel myths about […]
...moreThe Public Domain Review looks at how the introduction of street lights in 17th-century London forever changed literature.
...moreAt The Public Domain Review, Henry Giardina examines how the then-recent invention of motion picture influenced Frank Norris’s novel McTeague and the development of naturalism.
...moreSudden sounds, such as the report of a musket or a cannon, were well known to kill scorbutic sailors. Even pleasant stimuli such as a drink of fresh water, or a long-awaited taste of fruit, could provoke a seizure and put an end to their lives. For The Public Domain Review, Jonathan Lamb looks at […]
...moreFor The Public Domain Review, Dane Kennedy looks at two accounts of European expeditions that undermined the popular Victorian view of African exploration.
...moreFor the image to work…the viewer must not see the image for what it is – a black square. The viewer must understand the square as formlessness, and the black inside as neither a fullness nor an emptiness. This simple little image requires a lot of work on the part of the viewer…For a synthetic, […]
...moreFor centuries the study of flowers and the cultivation of gardens were deemed to be safe pursuits for genteel young ladies – providing they did not aspire to become professional botanists…Carl Linnaeus’s sexual system for the classification of plants, based on stamens and pistils and expressed in overtly sexual terms, changed all that. The Public […]
...moreThe Public Domain Review takes a look at The Comic History of Rome, a book that satirized Roman history as well as Victorian society.
...moreThe Public Domain Review examines “the masterpiece” that is Marcellin Boule’s L’Homme Fossile de La Chapelle-aux-Saints, a book published in 1911 that includes early 3D images.
...moreAnd what do we make of chocolate? Are you not afraid that it will burn your blood? Could it be that these miraculous effects mask some kind of inferno [in the body]? The Public Domain Review examines 17th century texts to discover the history of coffee, tea, and chocolate in Europe.
...moreThe Public Domain Review previews literature and art that will be entering the public domain in 2015, including work from Flannery O’Connor and Ian Fleming.
...more[Julia seemed like] a monster to the whole world, an abnormality put on display for money, someone who had been taught a few artistic turns, like a trained animal. [But] for the few who knew her better, she was a warm, feeling, thoughtful, spiritually very gifted being with a sensitive heart and mind… and it […]
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