The Public Domain Review

Online journal exploring works from the history of art, literature, and ideas. Featuring 300+ essays — ✍️ submissions welcome. Also 900+ prints in our shop!

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

NEW ESSAY — “Men with Queer Nerves”: Ross Bullen on the odd phenomenon of “Jumping Frenchmen”, French-Canadian lumberjacks in 19th-c Maine who, at the slightest stimulus, seemed to jump, strike out w/ their limbs, or mimic languages they could not speak: https://t.co/Ro3Q9hZPcm

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Theo van Hoytema, Orchids, ca. 1900.

One of more than 800 prints available to buy from our online shop: https://t.co/4xd8PIH0vK

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

At the end of the 17th century a mysterious kayak-paddling “Finnman” was first seen in Orkney waters. @JonWestaway explores what the subsequent explanations tell us about early modern science's fascination with the "out of place": https://t.co/Cjzx1csrfv

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#SundayReads: A. D. Manns on the speculative origins of Aradia, "the Gospel of the Witches"... https://t.co/frDIuT63IL

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Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880) — 1st English translation of Pu Songling's collection of classical Chinese stories, including magical pear trees, thimble-sized babies, ghostly cities, and mean spirited daughters-in-law being turned into pigs: https://t.co/gb8PRTFZLC

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The Joys of Young Werther (1775) — a year after Goethe’s tale of teenage angst and suicide, came this satire giving it a Hollywood ending: https://t.co/Mbp2nF1Nxy

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

.@daisysainsbury on the extraordinary life of Eugène-François Vidocq (1775–1857), the founder of modern criminology who had a rap sheet longer than his very tall tales: https://t.co/1HLRrypjJT

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City streets, a winepress, pulleys, spinning tops, a ray fish, curdled milk: some of the images used by anatomist Andreas Vesalius (who died #onthisday in 1564) to explain the workings of the human body. Marri Lynn explores: https://t.co/1yKGCU0J6Y #OTD

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In 1911, the soon-to-be poet laureate Robert Bridges published the poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben, a school friend (with whom Gerard Manley Hopkins was apparently besotted) who had drowned to death at the age of 19 almost half a century earlier: https://t.co/S0ijxyHK5P

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Henri Rivière’s Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (1888–1902), French lithographs of the then brand new structure and its environs, in the style of Japanese woodblock prints: https://t.co/ExDtqPOxKZ

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Radical serving of Friday fish from the 1st colour publication on fish (1754). As the top specimen (with smiling sun) indicates, some of the offerings in the book lean perhaps a little too heavily on the imagination than today's ichthyologists may allow: https://t.co/0X8ATHSBeq

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Studio photographs of #baseball players from @nypl’s @Spalding Collection. The photographs feature players of different teams from New York and Philadelphia and seem to be mostly taken in the 1870s and 1880s. Lots more here: https://t.co/OGSmTCV1qx @mlb

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Clear Shadows (1867) is a book of silhouette portraits (and riddles) by Ochiai Yoshiiku, depicting members of Edo's “kyōga-awase” club, who played a game similar to Pictionary — illustrating a subject but without drawing the subject itself. More here: https://t.co/sv8rIxG7CK

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A few of the many great photos by Heinrich Hamann of Hamburg’s St. Pauli gymnastics society (Turnverein), circa 1900.

More than a set of techniques to improve individual fitness, “Turnverein” gymnastics were meant to train a new form of body politic: https://t.co/kzGWGNT1bW

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Illuminations by Evrard d'Espinque for a circa 1480 French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' 13th-century De Proprietatibus Rerum. More marvellous maps from the manuscript here: https://t.co/d4hoiYJRHs

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Would he make your hot celeb liszt?

Happy birthday to Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, and famed heartthrob Franz Liszt, born #onthisday in 1811. Leon Botstein explores what we can still learn from "possibly the greatest pianist that has ever lived” https://t.co/7XWFKeAqWA

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Edgar Allan Poe was big into code cracking. He once challenged readers of a Philadelphia paper to stump him with coded messages, deciphering dozens before having to “swear off” cryptograms forever. More on how code factors into his stories here: https://t.co/e89WJ8eEW8

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Experiment carried out according to the ideas of the French physiologist Charles Richet (1850–1935) who believed in thought transmission. One person makes a drawing, after which another person tries to copy it without seeing the originally drawn picture: https://t.co/oS66e6Vvwz

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

Colour plates from Edwin D. Babbitt’s Principles of Light and Color (1878).

Babbit’s 600-page tome begins as a somewhat sober primer on color theory but goes on to explore the idea that our physical and psychic ills can be cured via “chromotherapy”: https://t.co/sKr8kAtY1V

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

Pages from a wonderful Italian book of proverbs made by the engraver and painter Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634–1718). More here: https://t.co/UpXuJ1DuqY

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Diagram from Edward Livingston Youmans' Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects (1856).

Buy as a print from our online shop here: https://t.co/9j7cKGj8vi