October is #BatAppreciationMonth! Here they are being fully appreciated in plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), published in 1904. More about the image, including details of the line-up, here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

It's #InternationalCoffeeDay! Celebrate with a read of @drmatthewgreen's essay on the halcyon days of the 17th and 18th-century London coffeehouse, a haven for caffeine-fuelled debate and innovation which helped to shape the modern world: publicdomainreview.org/essay/t...

Socialist, theosophist + women's rights activist Annie Besant was born #onthisday 1847. Read @ResObscura on her book Thought-Forms (1901), an intriguing work grounded in the theory that ideas, emotions, and even events, can manifest as visible auras publicdomainreview.org/essay/v... #OTD

Scene representing #October, from the 15th-century Très Riches Heures — taking place at what would now be the centre of Paris (a block or two south of l'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts). More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures

Nudibranchs as pictured by a Japanese illustrator named Kumataro Ito, artist for the USS Albatross’ Philippine Expedition, 1907–10. More of his stunning images here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/k...

A Treatise on Artificial Limbs (1899) – an encyclopaedic account of limb prosthetics, from a relative of the man who invented the rubber foot: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/treatise-on-artificial-limbs

"The Moguls give to the white owl credit for preserving Jengis Khan, the founder of their empire..." One of a hundred tales to be found in Anecdotes of Animals (1905): https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/anecdotes-of-animals-1905

“The hand of an over-electrified person, placed on a plate gives a very remarkable impression of the electrified cutaneous surface” — one of the many remarkable attempts to capture “vital cosmic force” in Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc's The Human Soul (1896): publicdomainreview.org/collection/b...

Born #onthisday in 1547, Miguel de Cervantes, author of one of the most illustrated books of all time, #DonQuixote. Read Rachel Schmidt on how the varying approaches to illustrating it have reflected + impacted its reading through the centuries: publicdomainreview.org/essay/p... #otd

"The Habitations of the Sentient Beings According to the Burmese" — from The Thirty-Seven Nats: A Phase of Spirit Worship Prevailing in Burma (1906) by William Griggs. One of a few images from the book available as prints from our online shop: publicdomainreview.org/shop/search/?...

Exquisite concertina book from 1917 featuring Paul Claudel's scenario, with illustrations by Audrey Parr and Hélène Hoppenot, for Darius Milhaud's ballet *L'homme et son desir* — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/man-and-his-desire/

Through the unique record of letters and other writings Petrarch left us, Paula Findlen explores how the Italian poet chronicled, commemorated, and mourned his many loved ones who succumbed to the Black Death, and what he might be able to teach us today: publicdomainreview.org/essay/p...

Anton Seder’s The Animal in Decorative Art (1896) — an Art Nouveau reference book full of elaborate ornamentation: winged dragons, chiseled hieroglyphs, warring sea creatures, and more... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/das-thier-in-der-decorativen-kunst/

An 1880 treatise on the letter H... https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-letter-h

In her essay “Free Speech and Bad Meats”, @kukukadoo revisits John Milton’s Areopagitica, a tract often championed by today’s free speech absolutists, and finds a debt to the work of early modern housewives — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/free-speech-and-bad-meats/

Born #onthisday in 1641, the very aptly-named Nehemiah Grew — an English botanist who was the first to depict the inner structure and function of plants in all their splendorous intricacy. ⠀ More of his images here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/n... #otd

#OnThisDay in 1940, the philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin died by suicide in the Spanish border town of Portbou whilst on the run from the Nazis. Here's Anca Pusca on the relevance of Benjamin’s oeuvre in a digital age: publicdomainreview.org/essay/o... #otd

Frontispiece to Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904), a classic collection of Japanese ghost stories compiled and translated by Lafcadio Hearn, who died in Tokyo #onthisday in 1904. Read its wonderful stories here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/k... #OTD

From 1969 to 2008 John Margolies photographed the eccentric roadside architecture and ephemera of the US. @librarycongress bought the lot, a total of 11,710 colour slides, and lifted all copyright restrictions on them. Here's our highlights: publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...

Spoiler: despite #rapturetok’s viral prophecy, the world didn’t end yesterday. Nor did it for the Millerites in 1844. New in our Now & Then column: two “Great Disappointments” — publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/09...

Born #onthisday in 1889, CK Scott Moncrieff, whose epic English translation of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu is widely hailed as a masterpiece in its own right. His rendering of the title is not, however, considered a high point... publicdomainreview.org/essay/l... #otd

William Dean Howells' vision of a “one-class” socialist utopia, outlined in his novel A Traveler from Altruria (1894), has all people guaranteed a share of the national product on the condition they work at least three hours a day. Read it here: http://buff.ly/2mHjg9C

A year before his death, the artist Howard Pyle set off for Italy, leaving unfinished on his Delaware easel his final painting *The Mermaid* — a profoundly haunting work of art: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/pyle-mermaid

A Victorian thrill seeker enjoying the volcanic gas on the island of Vulcano, just off the coast of Sicily. View more photographs by the pioneering volcanologist Tempest Anderson here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/tempest-anderson-pioneer-of-volcano-photography

Photographs of injured soldiers created by Reed B. Bontecou, a New York surgeon who documented the casualties of the Civil War battlefields (so the soldiers could get their postwar pensions). The red arrows trace projectile trajectories. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/r...

Alison Wishart from @AWMemorial explores the remarkable photographic record left by WW1 soldiers fighting at Gallipoli. Made possible by the birth of Kodak's portable camera, the photos give a rare and intimate portrait of the soldier's day-to-day life: publicdomainreview.org/essay/g...

In 1887, Ivan Aivazovsky gave each of his 150 birthday guests a tiny seascape—painted onto a studio photo of himself, brush in hand before a once-blank canvas. At 10.6 × 7.3 cm, each is almost 1/1000 the size of his masterpiece The Ninth Wave. Read more: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a...

Blue root, from “Erbario”, a wonderful 15th-century herbal from northern Italy. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/erbario-15th-century-herbal Also available as a print in our online shop: https://publicdomainreview.org/product/blue-root

Frontispiece to a 1687 edition of Cyrano de Bergerac’s Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. Featured in our essay on Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, which many consider to be one of the founding texts of the science fiction genre — publicdomainreview.org/essay/m...

Walking Couple by Moonlight, 1654, by Gesina ter Borch, the Dutch watercolorist and draftswoman who produced mainly watercolour paintings capturing her observations of daily life. One of more than 900 prints available through our online shop: https://publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-prints

Containing 405 alphabet specimens from 164 languages, Edmund Fry's Pantographia (1799) is a treasure chest for the epigraphical imagination: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/pantographia

Happy first day of autumn!!! (In the northern hemisphere at least... and those west of UTC-02:00). ⁠ Pictured here: Maple Trees at Mama (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige. More works by Hiroshige → https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/utagawa-hiroshige-last-great-master-of-ukiyo-e

Card from the autumn "suit" of the Astronomia playing card deck, 1829. Featuring 3 other seasonal suits the pack was used to play two games — Conjunction and Combination — which were trumps-based, similar to Whist. More images of the cards here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a... #autumn

“Old Boots was blessed with such a plenitude of nose and chin, and so tenderly endearing were they, that they used to embrace each other; and by habit, he could hold a piece of money between them.” More from The Book of Wonderful Characters (1869) here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

Somewhere between the lamp from the Arabian Nights and the Lilliputian laser of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the Bottle Man hoax of 1749 was as empty as the vessel at its center: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bottleman

Born #onthisday in 1866, the "father of science fiction" H. G. Wells. Read our essay by Peter J. Bowler on the writer's many musings on the future of humanity: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/h-g-wells-and-the-uncertainties-of-progress #otd

Mary Fissell on how a wildly popular sex manual — first published in 17th-century London and reprinted in hundreds of subsequent editions — both taught and titillated through the early modern period and beyond: publicdomainreview.org/essay/w...

In her essay “Spontaneous Revolutions” @the_manticore_ delves into a lesser-known chapter of Darwin’s research, his fascination with tracking the movement of plants — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/darwins-diagrams-of-plant-movement

"At a Funeral", one of the many enigmatic images to be found in Thought-Forms (1901), a work co-authored by the theosophist Annie Besant, who died #onthisday in 1933. More on these “synesthetic” abstractions in our essay by @ResObscura here: publicdomainreview.org/essay/v... #otd

Weekend's coming! Playtime! Image from a 1917 DIY book about “constructive-play” — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/manual-training-play-problems-1917?utm_content=bufferaafa7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer #FridayFeeling

Happy #TalkLikeAPirateDay! Although a few piracy cases heard in London's Old Bailey live up to the swashbuckling heists of stereotype, many reveal the surprising mundanity of maritime crimes, incl. arguing over chickens + the stealing of a captain’s hats: publicdomainreview.org/essay/p...

Born #onthisday in 1774, Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, an Italian cardinal and famed hyperpolyglot who was reported to be able to speak over 70 languages. Michael Erard explores.: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-polyglot-of-bologna #otd

Print from 1556 published by Hieronymus Cock , designed by Cornelis Floris II and engraved by Johannes or Lucas van Doetecum. More of these highly elaborate ornament prints, mostly in the grotesque style, from the collection of the Rijksmuseum here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/1...

From 1903 to 1907 Augustus Jansson produced more than 30 striking adverts for the Queen City Printing Ink Company, including the wonderful Ink Beasts Parade series, with its "Magenta Ponies" and "Orange-Yellow Ibexiaticus". More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a...

A comprehensive guide to help the unwitting visitor avoid falling victim to the various and nefarious crimes abound in early 19th-century London: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

Navaho Legends (1897), a book from the American Folk-Lore Society compiling Navaho myths and legends and including a lengthy introduction on the history, beliefs and customs of the Navaho people: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/navaho-legends-1897

The four classical elements — Earth, Water, Air, and Fire — as depicted in a series of 16th-century engravings by Adriaen Collaert (after paintings by Maerten de Vos). More here in our latest post: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/elements-and-temperaments-maerten-de-vos

NEW ESSAY — Laura Kolb on Mary Carleton, the 17th-century woman accused of posing as foreign royalty to lure a young suitor into a bigamous marriage, a strange precursor to our modern-day fascination with conwomen and counterfeits — publicdomainreview.org/essay/mary-c...

Ten folktales, translated from Swahili by George W. Bateman in 1901, showcasing the rich tradition of storytelling in Zanzibar: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/zanzibar-tales

Published in 1705 by surgeon Thomas Greenhill, Nekrokēdeia is a collection of all things related to death and burial, with a focus on the history and art of embalming. Read it here: http://buff.ly/2jF6fsd