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micromegas-by-voltaire-1752

Micromégas by Voltaire (1752) Text by Adam Green Jul 11, 2017 This short work by Voltaire — which tells of a visit to Earth by Micromégas, an inhabitant of a distant planet which circles the star Sirius, and his companion hailing from Saturn — remains a seminal work of early science-fiction. The planet from which Micromégas has come is huge, almost 22 million times greater in circumference than that of the Earth, and Micromégas himself (whose name means "Smallbig") is sized to match, coming in at a modest 120,000 feet (37 km) tall. Micromégas is travelling the Universe after running into a spot of bother on his home planet — embroiled in a controversy which had him banished from the court for 800 years (to give a sense of scale, the lifespan of a Sirian is around 10.5 million years). His crime? Heresy, for writing a scientific treatise on the insects of his planet (which, at 100 feet long, are too small to be seen by ordinary microscopes). During his interstellar jaunt he lands upon Saturn, and befriends the secretary of the Academy, a relative "dwarf" (only 6000 ft high) compared to Micromégas. After an entertaining comparison of their two planets, they decide to travel onward together to Earth. At first they don't believe the minuscule beings they are seeing can possibly be big enough to be intelligent, but soon are listening to them speak with the help of a special hearing tube fashioned from fingernail clippings. Picking up the language quickly the two giant aliens begin to converse with the humans and discover them to be more intelligent than first thought. They learn of many philosophers, from Aristotle to Locke, including Aquinas' theory that the universe was made solely for mankind, to which they "nearly fell over with that inextinguishable laughter which, according to Homer, is shared with the gods." The story ends with the Sirian pledging to write a book for the humans that will explain "the point of everything". When the volume is presented to the Academy of Science in Paris, the secretary opens the book only to see "nothing but blank pages".

public-domain-review

Jul 11, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:55.523312

the-model-book-of-calligraphy-1561-1596

The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561–1596) Text by Adam Green Nov 7, 2017 Pages from a remarkable book entitled Mira calligraphiae monumenta (The Model Book of Calligraphy), the result of a collaboration across many decades between a master scribe, the Croatian-born Georg Bocskay, and Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel. In the early 1560s, while secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, Bocksay produced his Model Book of Calligraphy, showing off the wonderful range of writing style in his repertoire. Some 30 years later (and 15 years after the death of Bocskay), Ferdinand’s grandson, who had inherited the book, commissioned Hoefnagel to add his delightful illustrations of flowers, fruits, and insects. It would prove to be, as The Getty, who now own the manuscript, comment, “one of the most unusual collaborations between scribe and painter in the history of manuscript illumination”. In addition to the amendments to Bocksay's pages shown here, Hoefnagel also added an elaborately illustrated section on constructing the letters of the alphabet which we featured on the site a while back.

public-domain-review

Nov 7, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:55.967141

destination-earth-1956

Destination Earth (1956) Text by Adam Green Jul 26, 2017 Produced at the height of the Cold War, and made at the behest of the American Petroleum Institute (still the biggest lobby for the U.S. oil and gas industry), this great little promotional film from John Sutherland Studios champions not only the wonders of oil as might be expected, but also free-market capitalism. The surprisingly humorous cartoon tells the story of how the suspiciously Stalin-like leader of Mars, named Ogg, sends a rather calamity-prone citizen to Earth to find a better power source for his poorly-running "state limousine". The exploring Martian, of course, lands in the United States and soon discovers the many and myriad delights of petroleum, and that, in contrast to his home planet, competition between companies is rife. His take-home lesson (and one drilled into the viewer on numerous occasions) is that "competing for the customer's dollar" is key to the success of the oil industry and, of course, the thriving country as a whole. Delivering the news to Ogg back on Mars, the leader replies defiantly that "competition is downright un-Martian", but the ordinary Martians are not to be deterred and soon rise up to overthrow Ogg and set up a thriving oil industry (and capitalist culture) of their own — the short ending with the slogan "destination unlimited" writ proudly across the screen.

public-domain-review

Jul 26, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:56.432722

autumn-saviour-breathe-an-evening-blessing-1912

Autumn: Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing (1912) Nov 8, 2017 Rendition by the Trinity Choir of James Edmeston's 1820 hymn "Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing", which somehow, on its journey to disc, ended up being enigmatically appended with the title "Autumn". The composer is listed as being Louis Van Esch, about whom we couldn't find any information. An architect by profession, Edmeston was best known for his prolific hymn writing — the total number of which was said to total more than 2000, one written every Sunday. "Savior, Breathe an Evening Blessing"by James Edmeston Savior, breathe an evening blessingEre repose our spirits seal,Sin and want we come confessing;Thou canst save, and Thou canst heal. Though destruction walk around us,Though the arrows past us fly,Angel guards from Thee surround us;We are safe if Thou art nigh. Though the night be dark and dreary,Darkness cannot hide from Thee;<brThou art He who, never weary,Watcheth where Thy people be. Should swift death this night o'ertake usAnd our couch become our tomb,May the morn in heaven awake us,Clad in light and deathless bloom.

public-domain-review

Nov 8, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:56.916997

on-the-disposition-of-iron-in-variegated-strata-1868

On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata (1868) Text by Adam Green Oct 24, 2017 These excellent images depicting "ferruginous variation" are from the publication of a paper, "On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata", delivered by the botanist and geologist George Maw to the Geological Society on April 22nd 1868. Maw begins: "Of those secondary changes which have modified the original chemical and physical constitution of rocks none seem to have more largely affected their aspect than the recombinations and rearrangements of iron". The piece is heavily illustrated throughout but it is the wonderful series of coloured plates which stand out: their diverse combinations of colour and form, at times, as though microscopic magnifications from a biology textbook, and at others, as if some kind of geological precursor to the 50s experiments of Abstract Expressionism.

public-domain-review

Oct 24, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:57.351119

park-conscious-1938

Park Conscious (1938) Sep 14, 2017 "Parks are a call to the people to rest and play in family groups, a cure which has been seriously advocated for most of our social difficulties", so teaches this understated rallying cry from the US Department of the Interior to get "Park Conscious". Focusing on the parks of Minnesota, the film is notable for its emphasis on the mental well-being that parks can bring, as places where "nature can work her magic of mental and physical healing". Its an emphasis that perhaps makes sense once the timing of the piece is considered, coming as it does amidst the recession of 1937–1938, a downturn which itself came after already nearly a decade of hardship known as the Great Depression.

public-domain-review

Sep 14, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:57.762820

strange-stories-from-a-chinese-studio-1880

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880) Text by Adam Green Nov 14, 2017 This is the first English translation of Pu Songling's collection of classical Chinese stories, a book comprising near five hundred "marvel tales", including magical pear trees, thimble-sized babies, ghostly cities, and mean spirited daughters-in-law being turned into pigs. Although Pu was believed to have completed the majority of the tales by 1670, the collection did not get published until 1740 (some years after the his death). Despite a lively cast of ghosts, foxes, immortals, and demons, Pu's stories mainly focus on the everyday life of commoners, with the supernatural elements used to illustrate his subterranean criticism of how the ordinary people of his country suffered at the hands of an unfair society. Depending on your sensibilities, this late nineteenth-century translation from English diplomat and sinologist Herbert Giles could be seen to suffer from the conditions of its creation, i.e. a climate of Victorian-era prudishness. John Minford and Tong Man, translators of a more recent edition from Penguin, describe how Giles chose not to translate "anything connected with sex, procreation, blood, sometimes indeed the human body in any of its aspects" — where fox spirits might attempt to engage in sexual acts with humans, Giles has them chatting over a cup of tea instead.

public-domain-review

Nov 14, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:58.247074

the-victrola-book-of-the-opera-1913

The Victrola Book of the Opera (1913) Aug 23, 2017 First published in 1912, this is the second edition of what would, by 1976, become a series of thirteen separate, and ever-expanding, versions of The Victrola Book of the Opera, a wonderfully illustrated tome detailing every operatic record released by Victor records. As the Library of Congress explains: The Victrola (or Victor) Book of the Opera was an ingenious strategy to promote sales of Victor label discs of opera excerpts. For 75 cents, record buyers could learn the plots and production histories of the most popular operas of the day, enjoy illustrations of favorite singers in costumes, and most importantly, have in hand a list of Victor records, with catalog numbers, of excerpts from each opera. Early editions of the Book of the Opera were compiled by Samuel Holland Rous, the editor of Victor sales catalogs. Rous began his career with the company as a tenor vocalist on many early recordings, billed as “S. H. Dudley.” And from Rous' own mouth courtesy of the foreword to the original 1912 edition: During the recent season several hundred performances of grand opera, at an estimated cost of millions of dollars, were given in the United States. This great outlay for dramatic music alone would not have been possible had it not been for the increased interest aroused in opera by the widespread distribution by the Victor during the past ten years of hundreds of thousands of grand opera records, at varying prices… For every person who cannot attend the opera there are a hundred who cannot. However, many thousands of lovers of the opera in the latter class have discovered what a satisfactory substitute the Victor is, for it brings the actual voices of the great singers to the home, with the added advantage that the artist will repeat the favorite aria as many times as may be wished, while at the opera one must usually be content with a single hearing… When you've done browsing through the above, we highly recommend taking a visit to the Library of Congress site where they've a wonderful interactive digital facsimile of the 1919 edition, including the opportunity to listen to nearly every recording listed in the book.

public-domain-review

Aug 23, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:58.597481

music-in-the-margins-the-funeral-of-reynard-the-fox-13th-century

Music in the Margins: The Funeral of Reynard the Fox (13th century) Jul 13, 2017 This motley crew of anthropomorphic animals can be found adorning the lower margins of a finely illuminated "book of hours" produced in late thirteenth-century England and now residing in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Appearing throughout a section relaying the crucification of Christ, these horn-tooting, cymbal-beating, bier-bearing creatures are attending the funeral of Reynard the Fox. Thought to have originated in Lorraine folklore, the tale of the trickster fox Reynard soon made its way into a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables, getting its most extensive treatment via the pen of Pierre de Saint-Cloud in his Le Roman de Renart, ca. 1170. Written mainly during the Middle Ages by a multitude of authors, the Reynard stories often acted as parodies of medieval literature staples (e.g. courtly romances), as well as satire commenting on political and religious institutions. Reynard's funeral appears in many of the tales: his enemies gathering to deliver weepy, over-the-top elegies full of insincere piety, only to then come a cropper as Reynard leaps alive from the bier and wreaks his revenge. These Reynard stories were so popular that the the old French word for "fox" (goupil from the Latin vulpecula) actually ended up stepping aside in favour of "renard" still used today.

public-domain-review

Jul 13, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:59.103107

dialogue-between-frederick-ruysch-and-his-mummies-by-giacomo-leopardi-1827

“Dialogue Between Frederick Ruysch and His Mummies” by Giacomo Leopardi (1827) Text by Adam Green Aug 1, 2017 This is an English translation (published in an 1882 collection) of a short 1827 piece by the great Italian writer Giacomo Leopardi. In it he uses the macabre creations of the seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch — who created remarkable "still life" displays using the preserved organs and skeletons of the dead — to reflect upon the mysteries of death. Leopardi has the piece open with Ruysch's "mummies", having come alive at night, singing in chorus. An awoken Ruysch watches through a crack in the door and, after overcoming his initial fears, ends up asking one of them for a brief description of what they felt when they were at death’s door. They assure him that dying is like falling asleep, like a dissolving of consciousness, and not at all painful. They declare that death, the fate of all living things, has brought them peace. For them, life is but a memory, and although they are not happy, at least they are free of old sorrows and fears.

public-domain-review

Aug 1, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:43:59.571955

illustrations-from-the-lights-of-canopus-1847

Illustrations from the Lights of Canopus (1847) Text by Adam Green Oct 24, 2017 The Anvār-i Suhaylī or Lights of Canopus — commonly known as the Fables of Bidpai in the West — is a Persian version of an ancient Indian collection of animal fables called the Panchatantra. The tales follow the Persian physician Burzuyah on a mission to India, where he finds a book of stories collected from the animals who live there. Much like in the Arabian Nights (which actually uses several of the Panchatantra stories), the fables are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, with up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many of the fables offer insightful glimpses into human behaviour, and emphasise the power of teamwork and loyalty: one passage describes how a hunter catches a group of pigeons in a net, only for them to be saved by a mouse who gnaws through the rope. The version celebrated in this post hails from nineteenth-century Iran and is particularly notable for its exquisite illustrations — scenes of tortoise-riding monkeys, bird battles, conversing mice, delicate purple mountains — 123 in total. The artist behind the images is not mentioned, but the creator of the equally elegant nasta’liq style writing which they serve, is named by The Walters Art Museum (who hold the manuscript) as one Mīrzā Raḥīm.

public-domain-review

Oct 24, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:00.103268

kusakabe-kimbei-s-photographs-of-late-19th-century-japan

Kusakabe Kimbei’s Photographs of Late 19th-Century Japan Aug 15, 2017 In 1881, after working for many years with the European photographers Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried as a photographic colourist and assistant, the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei finally opened his own workshop in the Benten-dōri quarter of Yokohama. He’d soon establish himself as one of the most respected and successful Japanese photographers of his generation, opening another studio in Yokohama’s Honmachi quarter in 1889, and also a branch in the Ginza quarter of Tokyo. The selection here is from the collection held by The Getty in Los Angeles, focusing mostly on work from the early part of Kimbei’s career.

public-domain-review

Aug 15, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:00.651519

the-civil-war-sketches-of-adolph-metzner-1861-64

The Civil War Sketches of Adolph Metzner (1861–64) Text by Adam Green Oct 24, 2017 From gilt-framed ambrotypes of glassy-eyed new recruits to grim and grainy shots of the muddy dead, the American Civil War was the first major conflict to leave behind an extensive photographic record. Apart from the stylised scenes of battle that found their way on to painted canvas, it is perhaps to these photographs that one might automatically tend if asked to think of the visual record of the war. However, in both the photographic record and the more official war art, as engaging as they can be, there does seem to be something important missing: the immediacy and intimacy of everyday life as a soldier. This is why the collection of sketches, drawings, and watercolours left to us by Adolph G. Metzner — during his three years of service with the 1st German, 32nd Regiment Indiana Infantry — are of such special value. We see the camps not through a haze of indistinct monotone, but instead enlivened with human colour. Battlefields are not softened by the many careful hours in the painter's studio, with their choreography and crafted composition, but instead carry a certain rawness of proximity. The gift of Metzner's collection can be seen most starkly in his portraits of people, especially when compared to their photographic counterparts. See, for example, the two images below. On the left, a photograph of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Friedrich Heinrich von Trebra, Union officer in the 32nd Indiana Regiment, and on the right, Metzner's caricature. Another example with Private Jacob Labinsky, a compelling figure who crops up again and again in Metzner's work. Of all the characters given life by Metzner it is this Labinsky (or Lawinsky) who stands out. Labelled by Metzner as “The Camp Comedian”, we see Labinsky as the humorous heart of camp life (see lead image above) -- even when fleeing in terror from Confederate bullets there seems to be the faintest touch of comedy to the scene (see below). We did a bit of digging and found that Labinsky served as a valet through many of the regiment’s campaigns, "but deserted while on detached service April 2, 1864", only to return four months later. He survived the war, and ended up with a wife and four children, and a 13-acre farm with some goats, cows, and a horse. As for Metzner himself, he was actually born in a small village in southwestern Germany, in 1834, emigrating to the United States as a young man in 1856, where he established himself as a druggist in Louisville, Kentucky. Four months into the Civil War he traveled to Indianapolis to get involved with the German regiment and begun his remarkable visual diary almost immediately. As the war progressed, and more comrades fell, the tone of his output can be seen to shift — the humorous giving way to the sombre — with a definite turning point being the horrors of the Battle of Shiloh in April, 1862. Returning to Indianapolis in 1864 due to injury (he was shot in the leg), Metzner created at least one oil painting from his wartime sketches but did not continue in a professional capacity. Instead he partnered with Frank Erdelmeyer, his former Union Army commander, to open A. Metzner and Company, a local pharmacy, and then, eventually, a company dedicated to producing high quality enameled artistic tile and ceramic glazes.

public-domain-review

Oct 24, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:01.132413

the-heart-of-man-either-a-temple-of-god-or-a-habitation-of-satan-represented-in-ten-emblematical-figures-1851

The Heart of Man; Either a Temple of God, or a Habitation of Satan; Represented in Ten Emblematical Figures (1851) Jul 25, 2017 The following illustrations — which, in a wonderful marriage of word and image, plot out the life of the Christian soul — form the central strain in The Heart of Man: Either a Temple of God, or a Habitation of Satan: Represented in Ten Emblematical Figures, Calculated to Awaken and Promote a Christian Disposition (1851), an English edition of a German book published in 1812 in Berlin by the "divine" and philanthropist Johannes Gossner (1773-1858). Gossner's work was itself actually a repurposing of an older text, a Catholic emblem book first published in French and which Gossner claims came to him by way of a German version published in Wurzburg in 1732. Although in his introductory note to the reader, Gossner gives the title of this book as Geistlicher Sittenspiegel (Spiritual Mirror of Morality), Peter Daly in his The Emblem in Early Modern Europe (2014), believes the title to actually be Geistlicher Seelen-Spiegel, and the publication date to be 1733. As for the wonderful images, Daly believes them to be based either on an earlier series of twelve illustrations "probably dating from the 1680s, or on the equally popular book in France about 1730 with the title Miroir de l'Ame or Miroir Pecheur with engravings by P. Gallays". For some reason Gossner left out two images from this earlier series of twelve, "the last image showing the pious in paradise, as well as plate 5 with Christ sitting in the middle of the heart". David Morgan, in his The Forge of a Vision (2015), traces the influence of this particular genre of heart imagery back further to the Flemish illustrator Antoine Wierix's Cor Jesu amanti sacrum, published in 1595.

public-domain-review

Jul 25, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:01.681591

the-concealed-erotic-paintings-of-sommonte-19th-century

The Concealed Erotic Paintings of Sommonte (19th Century) Text by Adam Green Jul 6, 2017 This wonderfully unique object, from the collection of Henry Wellcome, stands perhaps as something of an embodiment itself of the nineteenth century's complex attitudes to sex — at first glance exuding nothing but chasteness (cue images of covered-up piano legs, lewd ankles, etc.), but upon closer inspection revealing a much saucier substratum. And indeed, it is perhaps not entirely inappropriate that with this multi-layered painting the eye alone won't do: one must get up close and personal and use one's hands. Contrary to first impressions, the painting is actually made up of three wooden slats — two of which are painted on both sides, the third just on one — all slid into the frame in such a way as to show only the pink and white roses to the world. The other much naughtier scenes must be actively uncovered by those in the know. As for which paintings go where, it appears that the first slat (the roses recto, the Lubenzia/Libitina image verso) is attached to the top piece of frame, the removal of which reveals the second slat (the fruit recto and orgy scene verso), with the fornicating couple at the very back. Why the innocent-looking still life of fruit? Possibilities of symbolism aside, it is most likely simply to add another layer of security, should someone accidentally lift the first slat. About the artist — given only as "Sommonte" — not so much is known, but the object is thought to have been produced in Naples, Italy, at some point in the 1800s.

public-domain-review

Jul 6, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:01.966592

letters-of-the-late-ignatius-sancho-an-african-1784

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1784) Text by Adam Green Oct 5, 2017 Known during his lifetime as "the extraordinary Negro", Ignatius Sancho (c.1729–1780) was the first known Black Briton to vote in a British election, and the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press. As the memoir which begins this third edition of his Letters tells us, Sancho was "born A. D. 1729, onboard a ship in the Slave trade, a few days after it had quitted the coast of Guinea for the Spanish West-Indies". After "a disease of the new climate put an early period to his mother's existence; and his father defeated by the miseries of slavery by an act of suicide", Ignatius, just two years old, was brought by his master to England, and given to the man's three maiden sisters who lived in Greenwich. The sisters were far from kind, and "the petulance of their disposition" bestowed upon little Ignatius his surname, "from a fancied resemblance to the Squire of Don Quixote". Sancho would escape the grip of the sisters, when, by chance, he met the Duke of Montagu who took a liking to his "native frankness of manner". Sancho took to visiting the Duke and Duchess regularly, where he was encouraged to read, and was also lent books from the Duke's personal library. At the age of 20, shortly after the Duke's death, Sancho fled the household of the sisters to become the butler at the Montagu household, where he worked for the next two years until her death. Immersing himself in the world of literature and music (while also working as a valet for the Duke and Duchess' daughter and husband, and then later as a greengrocer), Sancho became well known in the literary and artistic circles of the day, becoming acquainted with the likes of Thomas Gainsborough (who painted his portrait), the actor David Garrick, and the novelist Laurence Sterne. It was his correspondence with the latter which helped secure him a reputation as a man of letters, and a symbol of the abolitionist movement. At the height of the debate about slavery, in 1766, Sancho wrote to Sterne encouraging the writer to lend his fame to help lobby for the abolition of the slave trade. "That subject, handled in your striking manner," wrote Sancho, "would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many – but if only one – Gracious God! – what a feast to a benevolent heart!". Sterne's reply became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature. There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events (as well as in the great ones) of this world: for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me—but why her brethren?—or your’s, Sancho! any more than mine? It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James’s,1 to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ’ere mercy is to vanish with them?—but ’tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavor to make ’em so." In another letter, writing his friend's son who had expressed racist attitudes after a visit to India, Sancho wrote: I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love – and for its freedom – and for the many blessings I enjoy in it – shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East – West-Indies – and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators – indeed of all Christian navigators – is money – money – money – for which I do not pretend to blame them – Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part—to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love – society – and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace – with the commodities of his respective land – Commerce attended with strict honesty – and with Religion for its companion – would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil- are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness – and powder – and bad fire-arms – to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping. In addition to his many letters — the publication of which was an immediate bestseller — Sancho also published a book for the Princess Royal about his great passion, music, and two plays.

public-domain-review

Oct 5, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:02.279797

emile-antoine-bayard-s-illustrations-for-around-the-moon-by-jules-verne-1870

Émile-Antoine Bayard’s Illustrations for Around the Moon by Jules Verne (1870) Text by Adam Green Oct 24, 2017 Readers of Jules Verne's early science-fiction classic From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre à la lune) — which left the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers and dog, hurtling through space — had to wait a whole five years before learning the fate of its heroes. Not only were they rewarded for their patience by a fine continuation of the space adventure (which we won't spoil by describing here), but also with the addition of a superb series of wood engravings to illustrate the tale. The set of images — arguably the very first to depict space travel on a scientific basis — were the work of the French illustrators Émile-Antoine Bayard and Alphonse de Neuville, though its the former's contributions, which depict scenes involving space, which we've focused on for this post. Despite the brilliance and vision of these illustrations, it is for a wholly more terrestrial image for which Bayard is best known today — a sketch of the sad-eyed Cosette sweeping, which he completed for the original edition of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1865), and which for the last four decades or so, Tricolour-infused, has adorned playbills and theatre hoardings the world over in service of Claude-Michel Schönberg's hugely popular musical, "Les Mis". PS: You'll perhaps notice that the scans featured below are not of the best quality. They are the best we could find online which have no restrictions on their re-use (a slightly better scan here at BnF but they sadly have restrictive re-use). If you've a copy of the work, and would be up for scanning it, please do get in touch!

public-domain-review

Oct 24, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:02.757229

alphonse-bertillon-s-synoptic-table-of-physiognomic-traits-ca-1909

Alphonse Bertillon’s Synoptic Table of Physiognomic Traits (ca. 1909) Text by Adam Green Oct 28, 2017 Alphonse Bertillon's Tableau synoptic des traits physionomiques was essentially a cheat sheet to help police clerks put into practice his pioneering method for classifying and archiving the images (and accompanying details) of repeat offenders, a system known as bertillonage. Beginning his career as a records clerk in the Parisian police department, Bertillon, the child of two statisticians and endowed with an obsessive love of order, soon became exasperated with the chaos of the files on offenders. The problem was particularly acute when it came to identifying offenders as repeat offenders (recidivists), given that the person in question could simply provide a false name. Before Bertillon, to find the files of the accused (or if there was even one already existing) the police would have to sift through the notorious "rogues' gallery", a disorganised mess of photographic portraits of past offenders, and hope for a visual match. Bertillon's solution was to develop a rigorous system of classification, or "signalment", to help organise these photographs. This involved — in addition to taking simple measurements of the head, body, and extremities — breaking down the criminal's physiognomy into discrete and classifiable elements (the curl of ear, fold of brow, inclination of chin). What in other contexts might be the much loved (or reviled) expressions of a personality, in Bertillon's world become simply units of information. Taking a note of these, as well as individual markings such as scars or tattoos, and personality characteristics, Bertillon could produce a composite formula that could then be tied to a photographic portrait and name, all displayed on a single card, a portrait parlé (a speaking portrait). These cards were then systematically archived and cross-indexed, to make the task of linking a reticent offender with a possible criminal past, infinitely easier. Put into practise in 1883, the system was hugely effective and was soon adopted by police forces across the channel, before spreading throughout Europe and the Americas, (though without Bertillon's obsessive eye overseeing proceedings, its foreign adventures were not a complete success). Key to the whole endeavour, of course, was the new exactitude of representation afforded by photography, though this was still an exactitude limited to a particular moment. Over time faces change, a fact which rendered Bertillon's system less than perfect. With the call for an identifier more fixed than the measurements of an inevitably changing face, and a system less complex, bertillonage was eventually, by the beginning of the 20th century, supplanted by the new kid on the forensic science block — fingerprinting. The at once wonderful and somewhat terrifying image featured here, though rendered obsolete in a practical sense, stands today as a potent symbol for the new age of surveillance and "biopower" which it helped to usher in. As the Met Museum, where this copy of Bertillon's image is housed, comments, "although intended merely as a filing aide, this image of the human face in all its striations of repetition and difference renders surveillance as a terrifying manifestation of the modern sublime."

public-domain-review

Oct 28, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:03.237598

chladni-figures-1787

Chladni Figures (1787) Text by Adam Green Aug 19, 2017 These wonderful diagrams are to be found in Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound), a late 18th-century work by German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni (1756–1827), in which he details his experiments — for which he is sometimes labelled the "father of acoustics" — with vibrating plates and nodal patterns. More than a century earlier the English scientist Robert Hooke had run a violin bow along the edge of a flour-covered glass plate and observed strange patterns forming. These patterns were caused by "nodal lines", the still areas of an otherwise vibrating plate. Chladni perfected these initial experiments by Hooke (using mostly sand this time) and introduced them systematically in his 1787 book, providing a significant contribution to the understanding of acoustic phenomena and how musical instruments functioned. Such patterns are now commonly termed "Chladni figures".

public-domain-review

Aug 19, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:03.737924

hieroglyphic-journal-of-a-voyage-to-the-caribbean-1815

Hieroglyphic Journal of a Voyage to the Caribbean (1815) Text by Adam Green Sep 6, 2017 This unusual and delightfully ingenious book employs a series of "hieroglyphic" plates to frame an account of a trade voyage to Madeira and The West Indies undertaken in 1814. Plate 4, for example (see second picture below), displays the dates March 28th to April 15th in a calendar-like grid, for each day either a dot, to connote nothing of importance happened, or a little illustration summing up that day's events — in this case, the sighting of a tropical bird, a large mass of seaweed floating by, or the arrival of a storm. For a further explanation of these "emblematic figures" the author offers an "Explanatory Key", which reads ostensibly as a regular journal recounting highlights from the course of days, except rather than under the headings of dates, they relate directly to the pictures and are so numbered. According to its anonymous author, referred to only as "a young traveller", the plates came first, the motive for which was a "deficiency of time to note down my observances as they occurred". All in all it is a curious, but strangely compelling device — the note-taking aspect (albeit unusual given its pictorial nature) given emphasis over any kind of official after-the-event spinning of a narrative.

public-domain-review

Sep 6, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:04.266561

skeleton-leaves-1873

Skeleton Leaves (1873) Feb 5, 2013 A series of elaborate "skeleton leaf" arrangements, from the photographic studios of John P. Soule which stood on Washington Street in Boston from 1861 to 1882. As well as producing many pictures of Boston's buildings, notable events (such as the 1869 National Peace Jubilee and the great fire of 1872), carte-de-visite portraits etc., Soule also produced these so called "Skeleton Leaves". As well as comprising wreath shapes and crosses the leaves also served as elaborate frames for the portraits of individuals which were sometimes embedded within them. The process of drying out leaves in such a way was very popular at the time, with whole books being published that were devoted to the subject such as Phantom Flowers, a treatise on the art of producing skeleton leaves (1864).

public-domain-review

Feb 5, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:05.201877

the-six-voyages-of-john-baptista-tavernier-1678

The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier (1678) Jan 18, 2013 To give it its full title - The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, a noble man of France now living, through Turky into Persia and the East-Indies, finished in the year 1670 giving an account of the state of those countries : illustrated with divers sculptures ; together with a new relation of the present Grand Seignor's seraglio, by the same author / made English by J.P. - is a remarkable account of travel through 17th century Asia. Tavernier (1605-1689) was a French diamond merchant, traveller and pioneer of diamond trade with India, who covered by his own account, 180,000 miles (290,000 km) over the course of forty years and six voyages. Though he is best known for the discovery and sale of the 118-carat (24 g) blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668, (it was stolen in 1792 and re-emerged in London as The Hope Diamond), his writings show that he was a keen observer of his time as well as a remarkable cultural anthropologist. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Jan 18, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:05.654865

design-for-dreaming-1956

Design for Dreaming (1956) Jan 21, 2013 Over the top 1950s "Populuxe" advertisement for General Motors, set at their 1956 Motors Motorama. A woman falls asleep and dreams of a glorious future of perfect products, including a variety of shiny futuristic dream cars and Frigidaire's fully automated "Kitchen of the Future." The star of the story is played by dancer and choreographer Tad Tadlock. The film has over the years become a popular symbol of 50s consumerist culture and was featured extensively in the BBC documentary series Pandora's Box by Adam Curtis. It also appears in its entirety with an amusing "commentary" as a short feature in a fifth-season episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Some footage was also used in the music video for Peter Gabriel's 1987 single "In Your Eyes", Rush's 1989 music video for "Superconductor", a 1989 commercial for the Nintendo Game Boy game Super Mario Land, and a 1994 commercial for Power Macintosh. Part of the film, with dialogue, is played during the opening titles for The Hills Have Eyes. Some snippets (without dialogue) are played in the video watched by Michael Douglas during his physical in The Game and in the opening titles for The Stepford Wives. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Jan 21, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:06.109047

a-book-on-17th-century-gardens-1908

A Book on 17th Century Gardens (1908) Mar 11, 2013 A compilation of 17th century essays on gardens by five authors: Sir William Temple, Abraham Cowley, Sir Thomas Browne, Andrew Marvell and John Evelyn. As Sieveking states in his introduction, the writings of these five "represent not only some of the best of Garden, but of English, Literature. It would not be easily possible to select five better names to represent either the literature or the lives of great Englishmen". The book features Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus, his mystical vision of the interconnection of art, nature and the Universe via numerous symbols including the number five, the quincunx pattern, the figure X and Network pattern.

public-domain-review

Mar 11, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:06.600099

phrenology-diagrams-from-vaught-s-practical-character-reader-1902

Phrenology Diagrams from Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (1902) Mar 19, 2013 Illustrations from Vaught's Practical Character Reader, a book on phrenology by L. A. Vaught published in 1902. As he confidently states in his Preface: The purpose of this book is to acquaint all with the elements of human nature and enable them to read these elements in all men, women and children in all countries. At least fifty thousand careful examinations have been made to prove the truthfulness of the nature and location of these elements. More than a million observations have been made to confirm the examinations. Therefore, it is given the world to be depended upon. Taken in its entirety it is absolutely reliable. Its facts can be completely demonstrated by all who will take the unprejudiced pains to do so. It is ready for use. It is practical. Use it. The theory that one can ascertain a person's character by the shape of their features is disturbing to say the least. You can see the book in its entirety, including many more diagrams, over in our post in the Texts collection.

public-domain-review

Mar 19, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:07.043821

a-dictionary-of-victorian-slang-1909

A Dictionary of Victorian Slang (1909) Jan 29, 2013 Passing English of the Victorian Era was complied and written by James Redding Ware, the pseudonym of Andrew Forrester, the British writer who created one of the first female detectives in literary history in his book The Female Detective (1863). In this posthumously published volume Forrester turns his attention to the world of Victorian slang, in particular that found in the city of London. From the Preface: HERE is a numerically weak collection of instances of 'Passing English'. It may be hoped that there are errors on every page, and also that no entry is 'quite too dull'. Thousands of words and phrases in existence in 1870 have drifted away, or changed their forms, or been absorbed, while as many have been added or are being added. 'Passing English' ripples from countless sources, forming a river of new language which has its tide and its ebb, while its current brings down new ideas and carries away those that have dribbled out of fashion. Not only is 'Passing English' general ; it is local ; often very seasonably local. Careless etymologists might hold that there are only four divisions of fugitive language in London west, east, north and south. But the variations are countless. Holborn knows little of Petty Italia behind Hatton Garden, and both these ignore Clerkenwell, which is equally foreign to Islington proper; in the South, Lambeth generally ignores the New Cut, and both look upon Southwark as linguistically out of bounds; while in Central London, Clare Market (disappearing with the nineteenth century) had, if it no longer has, a distinct fashion in words from its great and partially surviving rival through the centuries the world of Seven Dials, which is in St Giles's St James's being ractically in the next parish. In the East the confusion of languages is a world of ' variants ' there must be half-a-dozen of Anglo-Yiddish alone all, however, outgrown from the Hebrew stem. 'Passing English' belongs to all the classes, from the peerage class who have always adopted an imperfection in speech or frequency of phrase associated with the court, to the court of the lowest costermonger, who gives the fashion to his immediate entourage. Some highlights include: Got the Morbs - temporary melancholy Mutton Shunter - the police Batty-Fang - to thrash thoroughly Doing the Bear - courting that involves hugging Mafficking - getting rowdy in the streets Orf Chump - no appetite Poked Up - embarassed Nanty Narking - great fun

public-domain-review

Jan 29, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:07.402340

adelina-patti-singing-the-last-rose-of-summer-1905

Adelina Patti singing “The Last Rose of Summer” (1905) Jan 28, 2013 A recording from 1905 of one of the 19th century's most famous opera singers Adelina Patti singing "The Last Rose of Summer", a song based on the poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore. Although the sound quality isn't great and her voice is past its prime (she was 62 yrs old), through the dust and scratches we can hear glimpses of why Giuseppe Verdi, writing in 1877, described her as being perhaps the finest singer who had ever lived. Patti's piano accompanist for this recording and others she made at the time, Landon Ronald, recalls his experience working with her: "When the little (gramophone) trumpet gave forth the beautiful tones, she went into ecstasies! She threw kisses into the trumpet and kept on saying, 'Ah! Mon Dieu! Maintenant je comprends pourquoi je suis Patti! Oh oui! Quelle voix! Quelle artiste! Je comprends tout!' [Ah! My Lord! Now I understand why I am Patti! Oh yes! What a voice! What an artist! I understand everything!] Her enthusiasm was so naïve and genuine that the fact that she was praising her own voice seemed to us all to be right and proper." (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Jan 28, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:07.899635

on-the-writing-of-the-insane-1870

On the Writing of the Insane (1870) Text by Hunter Dukes and Adam Green Mar 12, 2013 G. Mackenzie Bacon (1835–1883) — alienist and superintendent of the Cambridgeshire asylum that would become Fulbourn Hospital — set out, in 1870, “to place before the reader a series of pictures of insane minds, painted by themselves”. While the gestures and speech patterns of the mentally ill had been commented on in the nineteenth century, Bacon believed that a lack of attention had been paid to their writing. To carry out his research, he resorts to a kind of layman’s analysis of semantics and graphology. Describing one sample of a man’s handwriting reproduced in the book, Bacon notes that its “incoherency of idea, broken purpose, and want of consequence in the words, is shown in the odd scrawl and fantastic figures. It gives a better picture of his mental state than any verbal description could.” Throughout his text, the doctor defaults on this same commonsense heuristic of sensibility, such as when he tries to demonstrate, through a series of letters written some months apart, that a patient’s correspondence evidences her successful convalescence: “The next letter shows a great improvement, but there is still some flightiness; and the last is quite sensible in tone”. It makes sense that handwriting would appear on the dotted line between sanity and madness. In the nineteenth century, penmanship became an ennobling pedagogy — a way to cultivate beautiful souls in schoolchildren through florid scripts. Beginning with Platt Rogers Spencer (1800–1864), whose calligraphic style can still be spotted in Coca-Cola’s curlicue logo, handwriting was no longer merely about displaying one’s education or social status: “it became a process through which one learned key values”, notes Anne Trubek. The popular cursive “method” of A. N. Palmer (1860–1927) was used as a disciplinary mode of moral reform. “Penmanship training ranks among the most valuable aids in reforming ‘bad’ children”, he once wrote — and it is thanks, in large part, to Palmer that left-handed children, whom he considered “devious”, were long forced to right their ways in the United States. While handwriting analysis may have helped identify conditions associated with the degradation of fine-motor control, often its clinical use smacked of the punitive schoolteacher, such as when Bacon’s colleague Edward Charles Spitzka (1852–1914) deduced insanity from the overuse of punctuation: “in monomania the paper is covered with underlining marks, queries, exclamation points, dashes, and strange symbols”. Thankfully, handwriting was only diagnostic for Bacon — the doctor did not believe that disordered thinking could be cured by writing lines on a chalkboard. Two of the most striking images in the book, the only printed in color, were created by a “respectable artisan of considerable intelligence” who suffered a prolonged “melancholy mood”. During his two years in the asylum, the unnamed man spent “much of his time writing — sometimes verses, at others long letters of the most rambling character, and in drawing extraordinary diagrams.” The two featured images were drawn on both sides of the same small sheet of paper, and the patient, “as though anxious, in the exuberance of his fancy, to make the fullest use of his opportunities, . . . filled up every morsel of the surface — to the very edge — not leaving an atom of margin.” The result is a kind of concrete poetry meets horror vacui, the words conforming to the contours of a figure of eight, or venn diagram, and all space teeming with text in various scripts and colors. Reading the frontispiece as a series of distinct and overlapping sets juxtaposes “FULBORN” — a spelling of the asylum’s location that perhaps summons “full born” — with “THE SUN KINGDOM”; at the union of the two circles is the phrase “DESPERATION DRIVEN TO THE VERGE”, which is bordered by “VACUITY”. Bacon goes on to explain that the artisan, after leaving the asylum, went “to work at his trade, and, by steady application, succeeded in arriving at a certain degree of prosperity, but some two or three years later he began to write very strangely again”. After a visit from a medical specialist who tried to dissuade the unnamed man from writing this way, the former patient penned the following letter: Dear Doctor,To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to follow the visit of the great ‘Fulbourn’ with ‘chronic melancholy’ expressions of regret (withheld when he was here) that, as the Fates would have it, we were so little prepared to receive him, and to evince my humble desire to do honour to his visit. My Fulbourn star, but an instant seen, like a meteor's flash, a blank when gone. The dust of ages covering my little sanctum parlour room, the available drapery to greet the Doctor, stowed away through the midst of the regenerating (water and scrubbing - cleanliness next to godliness, political and spiritual) cleansing of a little world. The Great Physician walked, bedimmed by the ‘dark ages’ the long passage of Western Enterprise, leading to the curvatures of rising Eastern morn. The rounded configuration of Lunar (tics) garden's lives an o'ershadowment on Britannia's vortex . . . Unfortunately, things ended sadly for the man. As Bacon recounts: “In the course of another year he had some domestic troubles, which upset him a good deal, and he ended by drowning himself one day in a public spot”. Folded into On the Writing of the Insane is a soft critique of Victorian attitudes toward the variety of conditions once clustered under madness and insanity. “There is a popular notion that the insane are a very wily and cunning class”, he writes, “but those who live amongst the insane know well how little such notions are supported by facts.” In his suspicion of “the habit of regarding society as divided into two camps, the sane and insane, more or less opposed to one another”, Bacon almost anticipated Michel Foucault’s well-known theory of confinement, which describes how reason and rationality became the norms of European civility after the Enlightenment. By banishing unreasonable persons to asylums — or by exhibiting their irrationality as a spectacle meant to prove the inhuman, animal quality of madness — labor markets, property, and the legal sphere could be protected from potentially destabilizing modes of being. Bacon does not quite go this far, but, unlike some of his peers, he resists labeling “hysterical” women and those of “feeble mind” as insane: “The proper way to understand such cases is to think of them as victims of a permanent state, and not objects for pharmaceutical treatment”. A close reader of Bacon’s text will feel him groping toward a revelation that never comes, like when he observes that letters from “the poorer class” are “perhaps not so well marked [as sane]” when compared to his other examples.

public-domain-review

Mar 12, 2013

Hunter Dukes and Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:08.428229

the-heart-in-art

The Heart in Art Feb 14, 2013 A small selection of hearts through the history of art.

public-domain-review

Feb 14, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:08.926581

medical-imagery-of-the-15th-century

Medical Imagery of the 15th Century Mar 13, 2013 The following images are all taken from Tradition und Naturbeobachtung in den Illustrationen Medizinischer Handschriften und Frühdrucke vornehmlich des 15. Jahrhunderts (1907) by Karl Sudhoff - a book on the topic of medical illustrations in manuscripts and early printed books (primarily) of the 15th century. Included amongst the depictions are a few of the Zodiac Man (or homo signorum), a common figure in late medieval depictions of the body who had every part of his body linked with an astrological sign. See the book to learn from where each image has been sourced by Sudhoff, and if you speak German, to learn more about them.

public-domain-review

Mar 13, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:09.557894

vaught-s-practical-character-reader-1902

Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (1902) Mar 19, 2013 A book on phrenology by L. A. Vaught published in 1902, jam-packed with strange theory and a whole host of strange illustrations. As he confidently states in his Preface: The purpose of this book is to acquaint all with the elements of human nature and enable them to read these elements in all men, women and children in all countries. At least fifty thousand careful examinations have been made to prove the truthfulness of the nature and location of these elements. More than a million observations have been made to confirm the examinations. Therefore, it is given the world to be depended upon. Taken in its entirety it is absolutely reliable. Its facts can be completely demonstrated by all who will take the unprejudiced pains to do so. It is ready for use. It is practical. Use it. The theory that one can ascertain a person's character by the shape of their features is disturbing to say the least. You can see a selection of the book's images over in our post in the Images collection.

public-domain-review

Mar 19, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:10.034272

georges-melies-temptation-of-st-anthony-1898

Georges Méliès’ Temptation of St. Anthony (1898) Mar 8, 2013 Georges Méliès' short retelling of the temptation of Saint Anthony (La tentation de Saint-Antoine), with the temptations taking the form of the unexpected and persistent appearance of various scantily clad women. Although not as technically epic as his earlier masterpieces it nonetheless marks an advance in terms of subject matter, being one of the earliest films to tackle an explicitly religious theme. In this respect, as Film Journal comments, "Méliès proves himself the ancestor of Cecil B. DeMille and Franco Zeffirelli, whose own religious epics offer a similar blend of the solemn and the kitschy". The supernatural temptations reportedly faced by Saint Anthony during his sojourn in the Egyptian desert, have been an often-repeated subject in the history of art and literature. Colin Dickey's excellent article for The Public Domain Review explores how Gustave Flaubert spent nearly thirty years working on a surreal and largely ‘unreadable’ retelling of the story and how it was only in the dark and compelling illustrations of Odilon Redon, made years later, that Flaubert’s strangest work finally came to life. Read it here: https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/03/07/the-redemption-of-saint-anthony/

public-domain-review

Mar 8, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:10.532130

horse-drawn-fire-engines-1896

Horse Drawn Fire Engines (1896) Feb 8, 2013 Four horse drawn fire engines roar up a snow-covered Newark, New Jersey, street while spectators watch from the sidelines. Until the mid-19th century most fire engines were manoeuvred by men, but the introduction of horse-drawn fire engines considerably improved the response time to incidents. The first self-propelled steam engine was built in New York in 1841. It was the target of sabotage by firefighters and its use was discontinued, and motorised fire engines did not become commonplace until the early 20th century. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Feb 8, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:10.975795

endless-amusement-1820

Endless Amusement (1820) Feb 19, 2013 As it states on the title page, a collection of "nearly 400 entertaining experiments in various branches of science, including acoustics, arithmetic, chemistry, electricity, hydraulics, hydrostatics, magnetism, mechanics, optics, wonders of the air pump, all the popular tricks and changes of the cards, &c., &c., &c. : to which is added, A complete system of pyrotechny, or, The art of making fireworks: the whole so clearly explained, as to be within the reach of the most limited capacity".

public-domain-review

Feb 19, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:11.461538

various-forms-of-architecture-1636

Various Forms of Architecture (1636) Feb 22, 2013 A selection of illustrations from Variae Architecturae Formae, a series of architectural studies after the works of Joanne Vredemanni Vriesio, also known in Dutch as Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–c.1607). De Vries was a Dutch Renaissance architect, painter, and engineer. Studying Vitruvius and Sebastiano Serlio, (translated by his teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst), he became an internationally known specialist in perspective and, as well as books on architecture, perspective and garden design, he became the city architect and fortification engineer for the city of Antwerp. The etchers of the images in the book are given as Jan and Lucas Van Doetecum, two brothers from Hollstein.(Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Feb 22, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:11.938735

croatian-tales-of-long-ago-1922

Croatian Tales of Long Ago (1922) Feb 7, 2013 A seminal collection of short stories by the acclaimed children's author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić originally published in 1916 in Zagreb by the Matica Hrvatska publishing house. The collection is considered her masterpiece and it features a series of newly written fairy tales heavily inspired by motifs taken from ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. Due to this way of combining original fantasy plots with folk mythology, Brlić-Mažuranić's writing style has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien. Indeed, the 1922 English translation by F.S. Copeland was published in London by George Allen & Unwin, the same company which would go onto publish Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy. The illustrations in this 1922 edition are by Croatian artist Vladimir Kirin. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Feb 7, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:12.386685

the-vessels-of-hermes-an-alchemical-album-ca-1700

The Vessels of Hermes - an Alchemical Album (ca.1700) Jan 15, 2013 The contents of Box 14 from the Manly Palmer Hall Collection of Alchemical Manuscripts, a huge collection of esoteric works amassed by Manly Palmer Hall, a Canadian-born author and mystic, perhaps most famous for his The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928). Most of the material in the collection was acquired from Sotheby's auctioneers on a trip he made in the 1930s to England and France - bought very cheaply due to the economic conditions of the time. The material in Hall's collection dates from 1500 to 1825, and includes works from the likes of Jakob Böhme, Sigismond Bacstrom, Alessandro Cagliostro, George Ripley and Michael Maier. The creator of these particular watercolours featured below is unknown. A typewritten note in the back, in French, translates as follows: ALCHEMICAL ALBUM - The Vessels of Hermes – quarto atlas containing five beautiful colour plates very artistically executed and with explanatory caption. Vol. half vellum. The plates of this collection are the synthetic description of the great work. The first one represents the egg of Hermogenes and the three characters who hold it are salt, sulphur and mercury. The second is the king’s bath made with the blood of the innocents. The third is the sublimation by the eagles after putrefaction. The fourth is the Rebis still called the Androgynous. The fifth is the mercury of art symbolised by a heart surrounded by the crown of thorns in the centre of a cross, because the philosopher’s stone is the physical proof of the redemption by Jesus.

public-domain-review

Jan 15, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:12.697500

double-exposures

Double Exposures Feb 26, 2013 A compilation of double exposures, an accidental phenomenon no longer possible with digital cameras. As well as the unintentional displayed here (though the first picture is debatable, and the saxophonist too), it was a common practise to use double exposures to create what became known as "Spirit Photographs". One of the most prolific of the spirit photographers was a man named William Hope, whose startling images you can see in our post "The Spirit Photographs of William Hope".

public-domain-review

Feb 26, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:13.186887

emblems-ancient-and-modern-1699

Emblems Ancient and Modern (1699) Feb 13, 2013 Some believe that the tradition of personal badges (or “devices”) and emblems descends from antiquity, when militaristic signs were carried into war to instill terror in enemies and influence the outcome of battles. Daniel S. Russell discusses the “strange or prophetic dimension” that these symbols could mediate in medieval Europe, giving the example of Charles VI, who adopted the device of a crowned, winged deer after capturing a stag wearing a copper collar in the forest of Halatte, which was inscribed with mysterious, ungrammatical Latin: “Hoc Caesar me donavit” (Caesar has given me this”). Into the seventeenth century, these images mixed with heraldry and retained their talismanic properties, but gained newfound associations as reflections of the bearer’s intellect and wit. Here the “emblem” tradition — primarily used to convey moral lessons and lead the contemplating viewer toward spiritual clarity — splits from the wider uptake of “devices”, which were used as personal insignia, combining symbolic and textual elements meant to draw attention to the virtuous qualities of their bearer. Books that collected these devices and emblems could serve didactic purposes, such as Thomas Treter’s Symbolica vitae Christi meditatio (1612), where Tarot-adjacent imagery becomes a springboard toward spiritual contemplation, and later volumes focused on the moral education of youth. Or they could serve as source books for individuals in need of a decorative brand. Devises et emblemes (1699) is a compendium of symbolic compositions both ancient and modern, with corresponding mottoes in German, Latin, French, and Italian. It is thought to have been created as a kind of pattern book for artists and artisans alike. Some highlights include a floating stone, a lion being suspended over an empty throne, and a levitating heart basking in the light of a personified sun. The significance is hardly apparent to today’s reader. A flying scorpion soaring amid stars indicates that it is “worse up there than down here”. An elephant with his trunk upraised symbolizes the pleasure of pure piety, but an elephant stepping on a snake signals that no one can escape punishment. There are nearly as many meanings for trees as there are species, depending on where the branches are placed, and whether they bear fruit or foliage. But it is a mistake to believe that these cryptic combinations of text and image were once widely legible. Puzzling over their meaning was the whole point. The eighteenth-century encyclopedist Johann Heinrich Zedler offered the following definition of emblems a few decades after Devises et Emblems appeared: “An emblem is a picture with an image and a few accompanying words, which contains a hidden message and leads to deeper reflection. The picture stimulates the body while the text stimulates the soul.” This particular work is the pièce de resistance of Daniel de La Feuille (1640–1709), a French watchmaker’s apprentice who fled with his family to Amsterdam after facing religious persecution. Here he established himself as a publisher, goldsmith, cartographer, engraver, and art dealer. Aside from Devises et emblemes, his circa 1708 Atlas portatif, ou, le nouveau theatre de la guerre en Europe (Portable atlas, or, the new theater of war in Europe) proved popular, prompting further French, Dutch, and English editions. The Library of Congress has digitized a particularly remarkable page from this atlas, collaging fortifications, defensible terrain, and military technology — the kind of scene over which devices and emblems once held sway. Below you will find a selection of nine pages from this elaborate book. For those that like their morning cuppa with a dash of ancient and modern symbolism, we offer mugs decorated with these devices and emblems.

public-domain-review

Feb 13, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:13.653784

pictorial-atlas-to-homer-s-iliad-and-odyssey-1892

Pictorial Atlas to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (1892) Jan 22, 2013 This Pictorial Atlas is a collection of over 225 illustrations depicting all the major representations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as can be found in classical antiquity. They are arranged in order of each of the stories, which are in turn told in summary chapter by chapter, with accompanying description and commentary on each of the illustrations.

public-domain-review

Jan 22, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:14.127419

jehan-cousin-s-livre-de-pourtraiture-1608

Jehan Cousin’s Livre de Pourtraiture (1608) Feb 11, 2013 Selected images from a 1608 edition of Livre de Pourtraiture by Jehan Cousin the Younger (ca. 1522–1595), son of of the famous painter and sculptor Jehan Cousin the Elder (ca. 1490-ca. 1560) who was often compared to his contemporary, Albrecht Dürer. Just before his death, Jehan the Elder published his noted work Livre de Perspective in 1560 in which he noted that his son would soon be publishing a companion entitled, Livre de Pourtraiture. While there have been some reports that an edition of Livre de Pourtraiture was fist printed in 1571 and again in 1589, no copies appear to exist. Instead, the most likely first printing of the work was 1595 in Paris by David Leclerc, with woodcuts engraved by Jean Leclerc, just after Jehan Cousin the Younger's death. The book is one of the most famous on the subject of artistic anatomy and was printed again and again into the late 17th century.

public-domain-review

Feb 11, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:14.586160

slovak-folk-songs-1928-30

Slovak Folk Songs (1928/30) Feb 18, 2013 Adele Keshelak sings three pairs of traditional Rusyn folk songs from Slovakia, recorded in New York on January 30th 1930: Track 1 - "Rusadelina Fialocka" ("Forget me Not") and "D'Irava Mi Stricha Na Stajni" ("My Pet Horse Was Stolen"); Track 2 - "Na Dolini, V Hustom L' Is' I Na Dubi" ("In The Valley, In The Forest") and "D'Ivki, D'Ivki Hej D'Ivki Na Selo" ("Girls, Girls, to Maidenlane"); Track 3 - "Uz Singl'ujut Zakryvajut Kasarnu" ("They're Fitting Out The Barracks") and "Na Oktobra, Na Persoho" ("Joining The Army"). The accordion soloist is Pawel Ondricka. Michael Tokarick provides one of the introductory speaking voices on Track 3; below are two folk songs form his miner's band. These two Slovak folk dances were recorded in Camden, New Jersey on May 11th 1928. "Minersville Polka" is named after Tokarick's hometown in the coal mining region of Pennsylvania. "Zelenim Hajecku" ("In The Green Fields") is a traditional folk tune.

public-domain-review

Feb 18, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:15.100438

music-hall-performer-billy-williams

Music Hall Performer Billy Williams Jan 14, 2013 Richard Isaac Banks (1878–1915), who changed his name to Billy Williams after leaving his birthplace of Australia, was one of the most recorded popular entertainers of his time. Born in Melbourne, Williams tried a number of jobs before embarking on an entertainment career which led him to come to England in 1899. He became a popular entertainer in the music halls singing what were known as chorus-songs, and also appeared in pantomime. The year 1912 seemed to be the zenith of Williams' career – he appeared in the first Royal Command Performance of that year and achieved glowing reviews in the national press. Sadly this fame was not to last as Williams became ill in late 1914 and died in Hove near Brighton in March 1915, the proximate cause being complications after an operation, but rumoured to be connected with "previous social excesses." (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Jan 14, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:15.569612

illustrations-from-the-six-voyages-of-john-baptista-tavernier-1678

Illustrations from The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier (1678) Jan 18, 2013 Illustrations from (to give its full title) The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, a noble man of France now living, through Turky into Persia and the East-Indies, finished in the year 1670 giving an account of the state of those countries : illustrated with divers sculptures ; together with a new relation of the present Grand Seignor's seraglio, by the same author / made English by J.P. - a remarkable account of travel through 17th century Asia. Tavernier (1605-1689) was a French diamond merchant, traveller and pioneer of diamond trade with India, who covered by his own account, 180,000 miles (290,000 km) over the course of forty years and six voyages. Though he is best known for the discovery and sale of the 118-carat (24 g) blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668, (it was stolen in 1792 and re-emerged in London as The Hope Diamond), his writings show that he was a keen observer of his time as well as a remarkable cultural anthropologist. (Wikipedia) See the English translation of Tavernier's book, from which these images comes, in our Text collection post. You can also read a nice post on Tavernier's book over at the Res Obscura blog.

public-domain-review

Jan 18, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:16.065761

the-history-of-four-footed-beasts-and-serpents-1658

The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (1658) Apr 3, 2013 A selection of woodcuts from a book entitled The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, published in 1658. Most of this three-volume compilation is comprised of the zoological works of the English clergyman Edward Topsell who published several books on religion and other matters during his lifetime. A whole host of animals are represented in Topsell's illustrations, all of which which came directly from earlier works by the Swiss physician, naturalist, and author Konrad Gesner. Amongst the usual suspects there are also more unusual mythical specimens, such as the “Hydra,” with two claws, a curled serpent’s tail, and seven small mammalian heads; the “Lamia,” with a cat-like body, hooves on the hind feet, claws on the front, and a human woman’s face and hair; and the “Mantichora,” with a lion’s body and mane, a man’s face and head of hair, and a grotesquely smiling mouth.

public-domain-review

Apr 3, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:17.080471

extracts-from-the-endeavour-journal-of-joseph-banks-1769

Extracts from the Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks (1769) Apr 5, 2013 Appointed as the expedition's official botanist, a 25-year-old Joseph Banks travelled on Captain Cook's first great voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. After landing on the island of Tahiti, Banks was soon to become an invaluable member of the crew by virtue of the friendly relations he struck up with the islanders; a mutual trust he built up through his openness, natural curiosity and fascination with their customs and way of life. In his willingness to learn their language, eat their food, sleep in their huts, record their customs and partake in their rituals, Banks was pioneering a new kind of science - that of ethnology. As the weeks progressed his botanical observations increasingly gave way to a study of the people ("studies" that were not always at arm's length!). His experiences in his three month stay on the island are recorded in his Endeavour Journal. The journal is unique in character, not merely in terms of its content but also, as the writer Richard Holmes comments, "for their racy style, appalling spelling and non-existent punctuation". Below are a few choice extracts, highlighted by Richard Holmes in his (highly recommended) The Age of Wonder - a book exploring the Romantic revolution in science, in which Banks, who would go on to become President of the Royal Society, played a crucial role. Read also Patricia Fara's excellent article for The Public Domain Review, "Joseph Banks: Portraits of a Placid Elephant". (All journal entries below from a transcription of Banks's Endeavour Journal housed at Wikisource. You can also read an 1896 edition, which omits scenes of a more sexual nature, edited by Sir Joseph Dalton at the Internet Archive) 10th May 1769 - THE ENGLISH CREW GET TAHITIAN NAMES We have now got the Indian name of the Island, Otahite, so therefore for the future I shall call it. As for our own names the Indians find so much dificulty in pronouncing them that we are forcd to indulge them in calling us what they please, or rather what they say when they attempt to pronounce them. I give here the List: Captn Cooke Toote, Dr Solander Torano, Mr Hicks Hete, Mr Gore Toárro, Mr Molineux Boba from his Christian name Robert, Mr Monkhouse Mato, and myself Tapáne. In this manner they have names for almost every man in the ship. 2nd May 1769 - MR BANKS GETS INTIMATE WITH THE FEMALE ISLANDERS Cocoa nuts very plentifull this morning. About breakfast time Dootahah visits us. Immediately after while I sat trading in the boat at the door of the fort a double Canoe came with several women and one man under the awning. The Indians round me made signs that I should go out and meet them, by the time I had got out of the boat they were within ten yards of me. The people made a lane from them to me. They stopd and made signs for me to do the same. The man in company with them had in his hand a large bunch of boughs; he advancd towards me bringing two, one a young plantain the other. Tupia who stood by me acted as my deputy in receiving them and laying them down in the boat: 6 times he passd backwards and forwards in the same manner and bringing the same present. Another man than came forward having in his arms a large bundle of cloth, this he opend out and spread it peice by peice on the ground between the women and me, it consisted on nine peices. Three were first laid. The foremost of the women, who seemd to be the principal, then stepd upon them and quickly unveiling all her charms gave me a most convenient opportunity of admiring them by turning herself gradualy round: 3 peices more were laid and she repeated her part of the ceremony: the other three were then laid which made a treble covering of the ground between her and me, she then once more displayd her naked beauties and immediately marchd up to me, a man following her and doubling up the cloth as he came forwards which she immediately made me understand was intended as a present for me. I took her by the hand and led her to the tents acompanied by another woman her freind, to both of them I made presents but could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour. In the evening Oborea and her favourite attendant Othéothéa pay us a visit, much to my satisfaction as the latter (my flame) has for some days been reported either ill or dead. 28th May 1769 - MR BANKS LOSES HIS TROUSERS Night came on apace, it was nescessary to look out for lodgings; as Dootahah made no offer of any I repaird to my old Freind Oborea who readily gave me a bed in her canoe much to my satisfaction. I acquainted my fellow travelers with my good fortune and wishing them as good took my leave. We went to bed early as is the custom here: I strippd myself for the greater convenience of sleeping as the night was hot. Oborea insisted that my cloths should be put into her custody, otherwise she said they would certainly be stolen. I readily submitted and laid down to sleep with all imaginable tranquility. About 11 I awakd and wanting to get up felt for my clothes in the place in which I had seen them laid at night but they were missing. I awakd Oborea, she started up and on my complaining of the Loss candles were immediately lit. Dootahah who slept in the next canoe came to us and both went in search of the theif, for such it seems it was who had stolen my coat and waistcoat with my pistols powder horn etc., they returnd however in about ½ an hour without any news of the stolen goods. I began to be a little alarmd, my musquet was left me, but that by my neglect the night before was not loaded; I did not know where Captn Cooke or Dr Solander had disposd of themselves, consequently could not call upon them for assistance; Tupia stood near me awakd by the Hubbub that had been raisd on account of my Loss; to him I gave my Musquet charging him to take care that the theif did not get it from him, and betook myself again to rest, telling my companions in the boat that I was well satisfied with the pains that Oborea and Dootahah had taken for the recovery of my things. Soon after I heard their musick and saw lights near me; I got up and went towards them, it was a heiva or assembly according to their custom. Here I saw Captn Cooke and told my melancholy story, he was my fellow sufferer, he had lost his stockins and two young gentlemen who were with him had lost each a Jacket. Dr Solander was away we neither of us knew where: we talkd over our losses and agreed that nothing could be done toward recovering them till the morning, after which we parted and went to our respective sleeping places. 29th May 1769 - THE FIRST RECORDED DESCRIPTION OF SURFING In our return to the boat we saw the Indians amuse or excersise themselves in a manner truly surprizing. It was in a place where the shore was not guarded by a reef as is usualy the case, consequently a high surf fell upon the shore, a more deadfull one I have not often seen: no European boat could have landed in it and I think no Europaean who had by any means got into [it] could possibly have saved his life, as the shore was coverd with pebbles and large stones. In the midst of these breakers 10 or 12 Indians were swimming who whenever a surf broke near them divd under it with infinite ease, rising up on the other side; but their cheif amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe, with this before them they swam out as far as the outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness. Sometimes they were carried almost ashore but generaly the wave broke over them before they were half way, in which case the[y] divd and quickly rose on the other side with the canoe in their hands, which was towd out again and the same method repeated. We stood admiring this very wonderfull scene for full half an hour, in which time no one of the actors atempted to come ashore but all seemd most highly entertaind with their strange diversion. 10th June 1769 - MR BANKS STRIPS NAKED AND TAKES PART IN A RITUAL DANCE This evening according to my yesterdays engagement I went to the place where the medua lay, where I found Tubourai, Tamio, Hoona the Meduas daughter and a young Indian prepard to receive me. Tubourai was the Heiva, the three others and myself were to Nineveh. He put on his dress, most Fantastical tho not unbecoming, the figure annexd will explain it far better than words can. I was next prepard by stripping off my European cloths and putting me on a small strip of cloth round my waist, the only garment I was allowd to have, but I had no pretensions to be ashamd of my nakedness for neither of the women were a bit more coverd than myself. They then began to smut me and themselves with charcoal and water, the Indian boy was compleatly black, the women and myself as low as our shoulders. We then set out. Tubourai began by praying twice, one near the Corps again near his own house. We then proceeded towards the fort: it was nesscessary it seems that the procession should visit that place but they dare not to do it without the sanction of some of us, indeed it was not till many assurances of our consent that they venturd to perform any part of their ceremonies. To the fort then we went to the surprize of our freinds and affright of the Indians who were there, for they every where fly before the Heiva like sheep before a wolf. We soon left it and proceeded along shore towards a place where above 100 Indians were collected together. We the Ninevehs had orders from the Heiva to disperse them, we ran towards them but before we cam[e] within 100 yards of them they dispers'd every way, running to the first shelter, hiding themselves under grass or whatever else would conceal them. We now crossd the river into the woods and passd several houses, all were deserted, not another Indian did we see for about ½ an hour that we sepnt in walking about. We the Ninevehs then came to the Heiva and said imatata, there are no people; after which we repaird home, the Heiva undressd and we went into the river and scrubbd one another till it was dark before the blacking would come off. 5th July 1769 - MR BANKS WITNESSES A YOUNG GIRL BEING TATTOOED This morn I saw the operation of Tattowing the buttocks performd upon a girl of about 12 years old, it provd as I have always suspected a most painfull one. It was done with a large instrument about 2 inches long containing about 30 teeth, every stroke of this hundreds of which were made in a minute drew blood. The patient bore this for about ¼ of an hour with most stoical resolution; by that time however the pain began to operate too stron[g]ly to be peacably endurd, she began to complain and soon burst out into loud lamentations and would fain have persuaded the operator to cease; she was however held down by two women who sometimes scolded, sometimes beat, and at others coaxd her. I was setting in the adjacent house with Tomio for an hour, all which time it lasted and was not finishd when I went away tho very near. This was one side only of her buttocks for the other had been done some time before. The arches upon the loins upon which they value themselves much were not yet done, the doing of which they told causd more pain than what I had seen. About dinner time many of our freinds came, Oamo, Otheothea, Tuarua etc.

public-domain-review

Apr 5, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:17.571790

the-hasheesh-eater-1857

The Hasheesh Eater (1857) Text by Adam Green Apr 9, 2013 The Hasheesh Eater: being passages from the life of a Pythagorean is an autobiographical book by the American novelist and journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow in which he describes his altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while using a cannabis extract. Many pages are given over to detailed and elaborate descriptions of the visions he underwent after ingesting the drug. He also curiously talks of the perils of severe addiction although such a thing is not normally associated with cannabis use (some put this down to an overactive wish to align himself with his hero Thomas De Quincey and his experience with opium). The book was very popular on its publication in 1857 and led to great interest in the drug it described. Not long after its publication, the Gunjah Wallah Co. in New York began advertising "Hasheesh Candy": The Arabian "Gunjh" of Enchantment confectionized. — A most pleasurable and harmless stimulant. — Cures Nervousness, Weakness, Melancholy, &c. Inspires all classes with new life and energy. A complete mental and physical invigorator. Cult figure Terence McKenna would describe Ludlow as beginning "a tradition of pharmo-picaresque literature that would find later practitioners in William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson.… Part genius, part madman, Ludlow lies halfway between Captain Ahab and P.T. Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish. There is a wonderful charm to his free-spirited, pseudoscientific openness as he makes his way into the shifting dunescapes of the world of hashish.” (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Apr 9, 2013

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:18.048707

how-i-killed-the-tiger-1902

How I Killed the Tiger (1902) May 15, 2013 How I killed the tiger; being an account of my encounter with a royal Bengal tiger, with an appendix containing some general information about India (1902) is a small book written by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sheffield detailing his close brush with death by tiger. As the author explains in his introduction: My main purpose in writing this little book, was to place in a permanent form a description of my wonderful preservation from death in a chance encounter with a Royal Bengal Tiger. My life had been adventurous up to that time. I had shot big game of various kinds. But this episode, so marvellous in itself, so important in its influence upon my after life and character, marks the close of my career as a hunter of big game.

public-domain-review

May 15, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:18.560024

bifurcated-girls-vanity-fair-special-issue-1903

Bifurcated Girls: Vanity Fair Special Issue (1903) Apr 26, 2013 Not the same Vanity Fair of current fame, this was a version published by The Commonwealth Publishing Company of New York City, incorporated in February 1902 but which went bankrupt in April 1904. "Vanity Fair" has been the title for at least 5 magazines, and as a phrase became popular through John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress where it was the name for Beelzebub's dominion, and later also as the title of William Thackeray's 1848 novel. Dian Hansen in the first volume of her History of Men's Magazines (Taschen, 2004) discusses the "Bifurcated Girls" special issue and argues that this particular incarnation of Vanity Fair can be seen as the origin of the American girlie magazine: While France had a well-established men's magazine industry by 1900, America was just showing its ankles in 1903. A magazine called Vanity Fair (unrelated to the current incarnation) was the raciest thing around, and rooming house loozies the hotties of the time. In this New York, tabloid girls who drank like men might strip down to their petticoats and fall into bed together, exposing their corset cover and stockings to peeping male boarders. The famously loose morals of stage actresses made them popular subjects for these shenanigans, but the biggest thrill of all was bifurcation. "What?" one may well ask. Bifurcation, meaning "split in two", referred to the contours of a woman's legs revealed by her donning men's trousers. Bifurcation was a regular and very popular feature in Vanity Fair, it's popularity leading to Vanity Fair's Bifurcated Girls. Although rather tame by modern standards, the sexual innuendo in this feature is rife. These 'risque' pictures of women in trousers are a strange precursor to a time when women would don trousers, not for men's titillation (as it seems here), but as a practical necessity when many took over 'men's jobs' during WW1 and WW2, and later simply because they wanted to.

public-domain-review

Apr 26, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:19.040077

bockler-s-pleasure-garden-plans-1664

Böckler’s Pleasure Garden Plans (1664) May 21, 2013 Selected illustrations from the German architect and engineer Georg Andreas Böckler's Architectura Curiosa Nova (1664). The book is mostly concerned with the theory of hydrodynamics, water pump systems and different designs for water fountains, but also contains this series of elaborate geometrical pleasure garden designs. It's not entirely clear whether they are projected plans or a record of what already existed (if anyone knows then please do let us know!).

public-domain-review

May 21, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:19.525635

the-kawana-trio-1919

The Kawana Trio (1919) May 10, 2013 A film by Hans A. Spanuth for the series "Spanuth's Original Vod-A-Vil Movies" filmed in Chicago. It shows the daring exploits of the the Kawana Trio, described in the opening credits as "Artistic Foot Jugglers".

public-domain-review

May 10, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:19.964665

illustrations-from-a-victorian-book-on-magic-1897

Illustrations from a Victorian book on Magic (1897) Apr 17, 2013 Selected images from a massive late 19th century tome entitled simply Magic, subtitled Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography, compiled and edited by Albert A. Hopkins. The book takes a thorough tour through the popular magic tricks and illusions of the day, including along the way many delightfully surreal diagrams and illustrations, the top pick of which we've included here - often especially great when seen out of context. Towards the end are some particularly great "decapitation" trick photographs. See the book, with explanatory text and many more illustrations over in our post in the Texts collection.

public-domain-review

Apr 17, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:20.260248

17th-century-ethiopian-manuscript-the-miracles-of-the-archangel-michael

17th century Ethiopian manuscript: the miracles of the archangel Michael May 9, 2013 A selection of folios from an illuminated manuscript of 17th century Ethiopia, produced during the cultural boom, especially in painting, brought about by the establishment of a permanent court at Gondar by the Solomonic emperor Fasilädäs (who reigned 1632-67). The nearly 50 full-page illuminations of this particular manuscript tell the story of the Archangel Michael who, under the patronage of Emperor Zär'a Ya'eqob, had became the most venerated of all archangels in Ethiopia. He is depicted undertaking a vast host of miracles and heroic feats including saving the faithful from the burning flames of hell, healing the sick and treading on Satan. The illustrations can also teach us about the Ethiopia of the time. According to The Walters Art Museum, "the minutely rendered textiles in these pictures suggest a connection with the fashions of the Gondarine court and indicate that the painters depicted their scriptural subjects using a visual language rooted in contemporary culture."

public-domain-review

May 9, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:20.727002

a-closer-look-at-richard-wagner-s-manuscripts

A Closer Look at Richard Wagner’s Manuscripts Text by Adam Green May 22, 2013 Richard Wagner was one of the most influential and controversial composers ever to have lived. With his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art") - by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts — he revolutionised opera and gave birth to such masterpieces as Tristan und Isolde and the epic four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. If his music was sublime, his political views regarding "race" were far from it — in his writings he frequently expressed anti-semitic views (particularly in his racist tract Judaism in Music). The beauty of his music and the vileness of some of his political opinions (complicated by the fact that he was reported to have had life-long Jewish friends), make him a continuing source of intrigue and debate for scholars the world over. In 2013, to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, the British Library made available online its collection of Wagner manuscripts, mostly from early on in his career. The manuscripts come from the huge music-related manuscript collection of the great Austrian writer and music obsessive Stefan Zweig (whose writings, incidentally, passed into the public domain in 2013). Zweig acquired the Wagner manuscripts in 1937 while residing in England in exile from the Nazi regime. After his death in 1942 they went into the possession of his family who donated the collection to the British Library in 1986. Taking advantage of the wonderfully high resolution versions presented on the British Library site, we present below a selection of magnified sections from the collection. To read more about the collection see the post in the British Library blog — and to see the collection itself visit the British Library Digitised Manuscripts and search "Richard Wagner".

public-domain-review

May 22, 2013

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:21.249120

hands-1944

Hands (1944) Apr 8, 2013 A series of animated GIFs excerpted by Okkult Motion Pictures from Hands, an official war film by U.S. Army Signal Corps promoting total war mobilization, showing only human hands. You can see the full film featured on The Public Domain Review here and also on the Internet Archive as part of the Prelinger Archives collection. 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.

public-domain-review

Apr 8, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:21.775489

lantern-slides-of-norway-ca-1910

Lantern Slides of Norway (ca.1910) Apr 29, 2013 A selection from a collection of early-20th-century lantern slides held at the Fylkesarkivet of Sogn og Fjordane, a county in the west of Norway. The slides are produced by at least two British photographers – professional photographer Samuel J. Beckett and amateur photographer P. Heywood Hadfield, who was a ship's surgeon employed by the Orient Steam Navigation Company. Hadfield produced several illustrated books from his travels, including With an Ocean Liner (Orient Co’s S.S. “Ophir”) through the Fiords of Norway. A Photographic Memento of a Fortnight’s Cruising, published in several editions by the London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co. Ltd in the early 1900s. Beckett also produced a book on Norway The Fjords and Folk of Norway, first published in 1915 by Methuen & Co. Ltd. Learn more about Lantern Slides here.

public-domain-review

Apr 29, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:22.256309

james-mooney-s-ghost-dance-recordings-1894

James Mooney’s Ghost Dance Recordings (1894) Apr 2, 2013 A series of recordings made by James Mooney in 1894 of different Native American Ghost Dance songs. According to the Library Of Congress notes that accompany the recordings, the performances are probably by Mooney himself and not by Native Americans. Mooney was an ethnographer and self-taught expert on American tribes through his own studies and his careful observation during long residences with different groups, specifically the Cherokee. He did major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as those on the Great Plains. His most notable works were his ethnographic studies of the Ghost Dance after Sitting Bull's death in 1890, a widespread 19th-century religious movement among various Native American culture groups. According to the prophet Jack Wilson (Wovoka)'s teachings, proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with the spirits of the dead and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to native peoples throughout the region.

public-domain-review

Apr 2, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:22.727846

conversations-with-lord-byron-1824

Conversations with Lord Byron (1824) May 23, 2013 On 17th May 1824, a month after Lord Byron died, his memoirs were burnt in the upstairs drawing room of a house on Albemarle Street, London. The manuscript pages of the memoirs had been entrusted by Byron to his literary executor Thomas Moore two years earlier with a mind that one day they would be published. But with Byron dead, Byron's publisher John Murray, thinking the pages' supposedly scandalous contents far too damaging to both the reputation and legacy of Byron himself and presumably also to the publisher who would publish them, ripped them up and placed them in the fire. In his book Journal of the conversations of Lord Byron noted during a residence with his lordship at Pisa, in the years 1821 and 1822 by Thomas Medwin, published that same year, the author endeavours to "lessen, if not remedy, the evil" of the burning of Byron's memoirs.

public-domain-review

May 23, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:23.184927

the-accidents-of-youth-1819

The Accidents of Youth (1819) Apr 15, 2013 Through a series of short stories and wonderful engravings, this book is aimed at keeping young people out of trouble and "calculated to improve [their] moral conduct". As the author declares in his/her brilliantly earnest preface addressed to the child reader of the book: My Dear Children, The inexperience and thoughtlessness natural at your age exposes you to many dangers : I have therefore pointed out some of them in this book, which contains several instructive little histories, in which you will behold the misfortunes that arise from disobedience and want of thought. When your parents desire you not to climb upon the chairs, or touch the fire, or play with knives, or pins, it is not because they wish to prevent you amusing yourselves ; they are only anxious to keep you from harm. If you were allowed to do whatever you pleased, many accidents would happen through your own indiscretion : for instance, when climbing on the furniture you might fall, and break a leg or an arm; and might burn yourselves, by playing with fire ; or cut your fingers, by playing with knives ; or might swallow pins, in putting them into your mouth. Thus, you see you might often lame or kill yourselves, if your good mamma or papa did not guard most of your actions. Do not suppose, my dear children, that I wish to prevent your playing and taking proper exercise. On the contrary, I am very much amused by your games, though they are sometimes noisy; and I admire your harmless mirth. I wish you to be gay and to amuse yourselves at proper times ; but you should never be rash or disobedient. You can play very well without climbing up to the window, on the furniture, or other improper places. If you see guns, pistols, or other dangerous weapons, you should never touch them, as you may always find play-things more agreeable, and free from danger. Why should you play with a knife or with the fire? and why put things into your mouth, at the risk of poisoning yourselves? These things are forbidden you; and yet your amusement is the wish of your parents. They desire only to see you happy, and guard you against accidents which your own discretion would not avoid. If you are good children, you will pay attention to the advice of your friends, and receive it as a proof of their love.

public-domain-review

Apr 15, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:23.689008

traditional-italian-song-with-zampogna-and-ciaramella-1920

Traditional Italian song with Zampogna and Ciaramella (1920) May 13, 2013 A Zampogna is an Italian bagpipe, and a Ciaramella is a small woodwind that plays the higher melody line over the Zampogna's drone. This combination is often used for traditional Christmas music, as in this circa 1920 recording of a "Novena Di Natale" by uncredited performers.

public-domain-review

May 13, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:24.135118

magic-stage-illusions-and-scientific-diversions-including-trick-photography-1897

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions (1897) Text by Hunter Dukes Apr 17, 2013 When the high priest Aaron, older brother of Moses, cast down his staff before Pharaoh in the Old Testament, it suddenly became a serpent. According to Henry Ridgely Evans, who wrote the introduction to Albert A. Hopkins’ Magic (1897) — a massive handbook for amateur magicians and their scientific skeptics — this was a stage illusion, one still performed by contemporary dervishes in Cairo. Aaron’s rod, it turns out, was a serpent all along, “hypnotized to such an extent as to become perfectly stiff and rigid”, and, when thrown to the earth, it was resuscitated with “sundry mystic passes and strokes”. In their attempts to disenchant the mystical, Evans and Hopkins make the real world all the more extraordinary. The subtitle of this book, “stage illusions and scientific diversions”, speaks to the remarkable exchange that took place between magic and science in the nineteenth century. Many of the tricks written up here first appeared in Scientific American and its French equivalent, La Nature. As Colin Williamson describes, these periodicals “featured regular articles on the demystification of magicians’ illusions alongside reviews of technological innovations in, for example, the automobile, railroad, and aeronautics industries.” And the exchange went both ways. In Magic, Hopkins is attentive to the new kinds of illusions made possible by advances in photography, moving pictures, automata, and fireworks. Eadweard Muybridge’s cabinet cards of horses in motion and Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographic gun are treated as a kind of trick photography, alike in kind to darkroom techniques for producing images of spirits and men shrunk to inhabit bottles. From the other side of things, the special effects of early motion pictures employed by Georges Méliès, Segundo Chomón, and other practitioners of “trick cinema” — superimposition, jump cuts, and such — were initially understood through the vocabulary of stage magic and frequently featured magicians on screen. Hopkins and Evans were writing in a period when film, photography, and other new technologies of representation were still conceptualized as instruments of wonder. Curiously, Magic ends on a discussion of the micromotoscope, a device for projecting subvisual scenes with magic lanterns. The final image in this illustration-rich tome is not of sword swallowing or legerdemain, but of red blood cells imaged at a scale where their miraculous feats become visible to human eyes. Among the 550 pages of this encyclopedic history of magic, we find tricks that might be familiar to modern-day audiences: conjuring tricks (“The Disappearing Lady”, “The Appearing Lady”, “Decapitation”); optical tricks such as the infinity mirror or “mystic maze”; so-called “theater secrets” (“Siegfried’s Anvil”, “The Skirt Dance”); ventriloquism; and tips for eating fire. More unexpected are performances from the annals of illusion, such as the extended section on chapeaugraphy (the manipulation of hats). In one variation known as Tabarin — named after the “mountebank and quack-salver” who used to perform it on the quays of Paris in the early eighteenth century — a sombrero-like garment is bent rapidly into headwear of various styles. (A video of an 1898 performance is available here.) More than a guidebook for aspiring wizards, Magic is also a veiled theory of religion. According to Henry Evans, whose introduction performs a kind of historiographical sleight of hand, spiritual miracles, paranormal experiences, and occult occurrences in ancient times point to a forgotten pre-history of modern stage magic. “Weeping and bleeding statues, temple doors that flew open with thunderous sound and apparently by supernatural means, and perpetual lamps that flamed forever in the tombs of holy men”, believes Evans, “were some of the thaumaturgic feats of the Pagan priests.” (Two hundred pages later, in Book II, Hopkins offers detailed schematics of “temple tricks” designed by the Ancient Greeks, discussing Heron of Alexander’s description of the Triumph of Bacchus, a mechanical shrine with self-moving figurines, and the dicaiometer, a jug that magically poured a perfect measure every time.) In the Middle Ages, continues Evans, the frequent reports of phantoms were a by-product of improvements in optics, for magicians with concave mirrors “were able to produce very fair ghost illusions to gull a susceptible public.” Witches burnt at the stake during the Enlightenment, he intimates, may have been magicians fully committed to their trade. Below you can browse a selection of the extraordinary illustrations contained in this volume.

public-domain-review

Apr 17, 2013

Hunter Dukes

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:24.576690

radical-fashion-from-the-schembart-carnival-1590

Radical Fashion from the Schembart Carnival (1590) Apr 11, 2013 Illustrations from a 16th-century manuscript detailing the phenomenon of Nuremberg's Schembart Carnival, (literally "bearded-mask" carnival). Beginning in 1449, the event was popular throughout the 15th century but was ended in 1539 due to the complaints of an influential preacher named Osiander who objected to his effigy being paraded on a float, depicting him playing backgammon surrounded by fools and devils. According to legend, the carnival had its roots in a dance (a "Zämertanz") which the butchers of Nuremberg were given permission to hold by the Emperor as a reward for their loyalty amid a trade guild rebellion. Over the years the event took on a more subversive tone, evolving to let others take part with elaborate costumes displayed and large ships on runners, known as "Hells", which were paraded through the streets. After its end, many richly illustrated manuscripts (known as "Schembartbücher") were made detailing the carnival's 90-year existence. We are unsure what the flaming "artichokes" are all about, if any one has a clue do let us know in the comments! UPDATE solved - according to Christies: "They brandished lances and bunches of leaves - known as Lebensrute -- that concealed fireworks."

public-domain-review

Apr 11, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:25.023368

the-world-turned-upside-down-18th-century

The World Turned Upside Down (18th century) Mar 28, 2013 A series of woodcuts from an 18th-century chapbook entitled The World Turned Upside Down or The Folly of Man, Exemplified in Twelve Comical Relations upon Uncommon Subjects. As well as the amusing woodcuts showing various reversals (many revolving around the inversion of animal and human relations) there is also included a poem on the topic. The chapbook is reproduced in the wonderful Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century (1882) edited by John Ashton, which brings together hundreds of facsimiles of 18th century chapbooks upon a huge range of subjects.

public-domain-review

Mar 28, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:25.493492

texts-in-sebald-s-the-rings-of-saturn

Texts in Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn Text by Adam Green Apr 23, 2013 At the time of his death in 2001 at the age of 57, the German writer W. G. Sebald was cited by many critics as a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was his book The Rings of Saturn, written in 1995 (translated into English in 1998), which went a long way to securing Sebald's reputation as a writer pioneering a new kind of literary fiction. The book is exemplary of his strange and unique style: the hybridity of genres, the blurring of fact and fiction, the indistinct black and white photographs, and his meditation on the destructive nature of history, the human lives affected, and the restorative power of art. The book is, on one level, a walking tour through the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, Sebald's adopted home (he'd taught literature at the UEA there since 1970). The reader moves with the melancholic narrator from town to town, village to village, but in the process - through an astonishing network of associations, tangents, and apparent coincidences - one is led all over the world, into many different times, and many different lives. A ride on a miniature railway at Somerleyton Hall leads to 19th century China and the Taiping Rebellion; a chance meeting with a gardener to the bombing raids of the Second World War; a T.V. documentary on Roger Casement to Joseph Conrad, the Congo and colonial genocide; a browse through the Southwold Sailors' Reading Room to a meditation on wartime statistics and the tragedies wrought by the two world wars. In and amongst these meandering connections recurring motifs of silk, obscuring mists, combustion and burning are woven throughout to create an intricately patterned whole. Among the many lives of the past encountered is a myriad array of literary figures. Collected together in this post are the major (public domain) texts of which, and through which, Sebald speaks - accompanied by extracts in which the texts are mentioned. The list begins and ends with the great polymath Thomas Browne, an appropriate framing as the work of this 17th century Norfolk native has a presence which permeates the whole book. Indeed, in the way he effortlessly moves through different histories and voices, it is perhaps in Browne's concept of the 'Eternal Present' which Sebald can be seen to operate, in this mysterious community of the living and the dead. (The works below are shown roughly in order of their appearance in the book. Where possible the English translations of the non-English works are featured, with links to originals given below. The Sebald quotes given are from the brilliant English translation by Michael Hulse, and page numbers from the 1999 paperback Harvill Press edition.) Thomas Browne, Hydrotophia or Urne Buriall and Garden of Cyrus (1658) The invisibility and intangibility of that which moves us remained an unfathomable mystery for Thomas Browne, too, who saw our world as no more than a shadow image of another one far beyond. In his thinking and writing he therefore sought to look upon earthly existence, from the things that were closest to him to the spheres of the universe, with the eye of an outsider, one might even say of the creator. His only means of achieving the sublime heights that this endeavor required was a parlous loftiness in his language. In common with other English writers of the seventeenth century, Browne wrote out of the fullness of his erudition, deploying a vast repertoire of quotations and the names of authorities who had gone before, creating complex metaphors and analogies, and constructing labyrinthine sentences that sometimes extend over one or two pages, sentences that resemble processions or a funeral cortège in their sheer ceremonial lavishness. It is true that, because of the immense weight of the impediments he is carrying, Browne’s writing can be held back by the force of gravitation, but when he does succeed in rising higher and higher through the circles of his spiralling prose, borne aloft like a glider on warm currents of air, even today the reader is overcome by a sense of levitation. The greater the distance, the clearer the view: one sees the tiniest of details with the utmost clarity. It is as if one were looking through a reversed opera glass and through a microscope at the same time. And yet, says Browne, all knowledge is enveloped in darkness. What we perceive are no more than isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance, in the shadow-filled edifice of the world. We study the order of things, says Browne, but we cannot grasp their innermost essence. - (Pg.18/19) Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, urne-buriall or, A discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1907). Penguin Classics version of Browne's major works including Hydrotophia or Urne Buriall and Garden of Cyrus Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857) Gustave Flaubert was for her by far the finest of writers, and on many occasions she quoted long passages from the thousands of pages of his correspondence, never failing to astound me. Janine had taken an intense personal interest in the scruples which dogged Flaubert's writing, that fear of the false which, she said, sometimes kept him confined to his couch for weeks or months on end in the dread that he would never be able to write another word without compromising himself in the most grievous of ways. Moreover, Janine said, he was convinced that everything he had written hitherto consisted solely in a string of the most abysmal errors and lies, the consequences of which were immeasurable. Janine maintained that the source of Flaubert's scruples was to be found in the relentless spread of stupidity which he had observed everywhere, and which he believed had already invaded his own head. It was (so supposedly once he said) as if one was sinking into sand. This was probably the reason, she said, that sand possessed such significance in all of Flaubert's works. Sand conquered all. Time and again, said Janine, vast dust clouds drifted through Flaubert's dreams by day and by night, raised over the arid plains of the African continent and moving north across the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula till sooner or later they settled like ash from a fire on the Tuileries gardens, a suburb of Rouen or a country town in Normandy, penetrating into the tiniest crevices. In a grain of sand in the hem of Emma Bovary's winter gown, said Janine, Flaubert saw the whole of the Sahara. For him, every speck of dust weighed as heavy as the Atlas mountains. - (pg.8). Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary: A Tale of Provincial Life (Chicago: Magee, 1904). Volume 1 and volume 2 of the 1857 first edition in French housed at the Internet Archive. A highly acclaimed new English translation by Adam Thorpe published by Vintage in 2011. Brehm's Tierleben (1864-9) ...while on the one hand the study of Nature today aims to describe a system governed by immutable laws, on the other it delights in drawing our attention to creatures noteworthy for their bizarre physical form or behaviour. Even in Brehm's Tierleben, a popular nineteenth-century zoological compendium, pride of place is given to the crocodile and the kangaroo, the ant-eater and the armadillo, the seahorse and the pelican; and nowadays we are shown on the television screen a colony of penguins, say, standing motionless through the long dark winter of the Antarctic, with its icy storms, on their feet the eggs laid at a milder time of year. In programmes of this kind, which are called Nature Watch or Survival and are considered particularly educational, one is more likely to see some monster coupling at the bottom of Lake Baikal than an ordinary blackbird. - (pg.21) The Animals of the World, Brehm's Life of Animals, translated from the 3rd German ed. as edited by Pechuel-Loesche and W. Haacke, and rev. and abridged by R. Schmidtlein (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, Chicago). All volumes of the German original of Brehms Tierleben at the Internet Archive. Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Simplicius Simplicissimus (1669) Recently I realized that the imaginary beings listed alphabetically in [Borges' Libro de los seres imaginarios] include the creature Baldanders, whom Simplicius Simplicissimus encounters in the sixth book of Grimmelshausen’s narrative. There, Baldanders is first seen as a stone sculpture lying in a forest, resembling a Germanic hero of old and wearing a Roman soldier's tunic with a big Swabian bib. Baldanders claims to have come from Paradise, to have always been in Simplicius’s company, unbeknownst to him, and to be unable to quit his side until Simplicius shall have reverted to the clay he is made of. Then, before the very eyes of Simplicius, Baldanders changes into a scribe... and then into a mighty oak, a sow, a sausage, a piece of excrement, a field of clover, a white flower, a mulberry tree, and a silk carpet. - (pg.23) Hans Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen, The Adventurous Simplicissimus, a translation by Goodrick (London: William Heinemann, 1912). German version entitled Der Abenteurlicher Simplicius Simplicissimus at the Internet Archive (which includes the 6th book omitted in Goodrick's English version above). Denis Diderot, Voyage en Hollande (1798) Diderot, in one of his travel journals, described Holland as the Egypt of Europe, where one might cross the fields in a boat and, as far as the eye could see, there would be scarcely anything to break the flooded surface of the plain. In that curious country, he wrote, the most modest rise gave one the loftiest sensation. And for Diderot there was nothing more satisfying to the human mind than the neat Dutch towns, with their straight, tree-lined canals, exemplary in every respect. Settlement succeeded settlement just as if they had been conjured up overnight by the hand of an artist in accordance with some carefully worked-out plan, wrote Diderot, and even in the heart of the largest of them one still felt one was out in the country. The Hague, at that time with a population of about forty thousand, he felt was the loveliset village on earth, and the road from the town to the strand at Schevenigen a promenade without equal. It was not easy to appreciate these observations as I walked along Parkstraat towards Scheveningen. - (pg.84) Denis Diderot, Oeuvres inédites: Le neveu de Rameau. Voyage de Hollande (Paris: J. L. J. Brière, 1821). Algernon Charles Swinburne, By the North Sea (1880) Dunwich, with its towers and many thousand souls, has dissolved into water, sand and thin air. If you look out from the cliff-top across the sea towards where the town must have been, you can sense the immense power of emptiness. Perhaps it was for this reason that Dunwich became a place of pilgrimage for melancholy poets in the Victorian age. Algernon Charles Swinburne, for instance, went there on several occasions in the 1870s with his companion Theodore Watts-Dunton, whenever the excitement of London literary life threatened to overtax his nerves, which had been hypersensitive since his early childhood. He had achieved legendary fame as a young man, and many a time he had been sent into such impassioned paroxysms by the dazzling conversations on art in the Pre-Raphalite salons, or by the mental strain of composing his own verse and tragedies, overflowing with wonderful poetic bombast, that he could no longer control his own voice and limbs. After these quasi-epileptic fits he often lay prostrate for weeks, and soon, unfitted for general society, he could bear only the company of those who were close to him. Initially he spent the periods of convalescence at the family country estate, but later, ever more frequently, he went to the coast with the trusty Watts-Dunton. Rambles from Southwold to Dunwich, through the windblown fields of sedge, worked like a sedative upon him. A long poem entitled "By The North Sea" was his tribute to the gradual dissolution of life. Like ashes the low cliffs crumble and the banks drop down into the dust. - (pg.84) The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne (London: Chatto & Windus, 1904). 2001 Penguin Classics collection of Swinburne poems titled Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon. Read Julian Barnes' essay "An Unlikely Lunch" for The Public Domain Review about Guy Maupassant's eventful meeting with Swinburne on the Normandy coast. Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in Englsh Verse (1859) The only task FitzGerald finished and published in his lifetime was his marvellous rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, with whom he felt a curiously close affinity acorss a distance of eight centuries. FitzGerald described the endless hours he spent translating this poem of two hundred and twenty-four lines as a colloquy with the dead man and an attempt to bring to us tidings of him. The English verses he devised for the purpose, which radiate with a pure, seemingly unselfconscious beauty, feign an anonymity that disdains even the least claim to authorship, and draw us, word by word, to an invisible point where the medieval orient and the fading occident can come together in a way never allowed them by the calamitous course of history. For in and out, above, about, below, / ’Tis nothing but magic Shadow-Show, / play’d in a Box Whose Candle is the Sun, / Round which the Phantom figures come and go. The Rubaiyat was published in 1859, and it was also in that year that William Browne, who probably meant more to FitzGerald than anyone else on earth, died a painful death from serious injuries sustained in a hunting accident. - (pg.200/1) Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in English Verse (London: H. W. Bell, 1901). François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe (1859) It was in Rome in 1806 that he first felt the desire to search the depths of his soul. In 1811, Chateaubriand began this undertaking in earnest, and from that time onwards he devoted himself to his recollections whenever the circumstances of his at once glorious and painful life permitted. His personal feelings and thoughts unfolded against the background of the momentous upheavals of those years: the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, his own exile, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Restoration and the July Monarchy all were part of this interminable play performed on the world's stage, a play which took its toll on the privileged observer no less than on the nameless masses... Within the overall context of the task of remembering, such colorful accounts of military spectacles and large-scale operations form what might be called the highlights of history which staggers blindly from one disaster to the next. The chronicler, who was present at these events and is once more recalling what he witnessed, inscribes his experiences, in an act of self-mutilation, onto his own body. In the writing, he becomes the martyred paradigm of the fate Providence has in store for us, and, though still alive, is already in the tomb that his memoirs represent. - (pg.200/1) Memoirs of Chateaubriand, Vol 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1848). French versions of Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe at the Internet Archive. The 1961 Robert Baldrick English translation <a href="The Memoirs of Chateaubriand. HTML online and hyperlinked English version, translated by A.S. Kline. Thomas Browne, Musaeum Clausum (1684) Amongst the miscellaneous papers left by Sir Thomas Browne... there is also to found a catalogue of remarkable books, listing pictures, antiquities and sundry singular items that may have formed part of a collection put together by Browne but were more likely products of his imagination, the inventory of a treasure house that existed purely in his head and to which there is no access except through the letters on the page. - (pg.200/1) Thomas Browne, Certain Miscellany Tracts (London: Henry Bonwick, 1684). Read Claire Preston's excellent article "Lost Libraries" for The Public Domain Review, which explores Musaeum Clausum amid the wider context of a Renaissance preoccupation with lost intellectual treasures.

public-domain-review

Apr 23, 2013

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:25.816387

jelly-roll-morton-1927

Jelly Roll Morton (1927) Apr 19, 2013 A compilation of Jelly Roll Morton's classic Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" sessions, recorded in 1926-27. Jelly Roll Morton - ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer from New Orleans, Louisiana - started out his musical career playing brothels as a teenager, then toured the American South as part of a minstrel show, before settling in Chicago where he started to write songs. Widely recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, Morton is perhaps most notable as jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential spirit and characteristics when notated. In 1915, his composition "Jelly Roll Blues" became the first ever published jazz composition. Morton is also notable for naming and popularizing the "Spanish tinge" (habanera rhythm and tresillo), and for writing such standards as "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the latter a tribute to New Orleans personalities from the turn of the 19th century to 20th century. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Apr 19, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:26.257494

a-pack-of-cavalier-playing-cards-1886

A Pack of Cavalier Playing Cards (1886) Mar 26, 2013 A facsimile with explanations of a "very curious Pack of Cards" which used to belong to Lord Nelson and date from around 1660. The cards feature various satirical allusions to the politics of the time - namely the English Civil War and the following Interregnum - and, along with the explanations given, form (as the subtitle announces) "a complete political satire of the commonwealth".

public-domain-review

Mar 26, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:26.719848

sketches-by-yoshitoshi-1882

Sketches by Yoshitoshi (1882) Mar 21, 2013 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing (literally meaning "pictures of the floating world"). He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. This series of coloured woodblock prints was produced in 1882. (Wikipedia)

public-domain-review

Mar 21, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:27.199230

bible-symbols-1908

Through the Eye to the Heart: Bible Symbols (1908 edition) May 7, 2013 Frank Beard (1842–1905) led many lives before designing hieroglyphic bibles. A successful political cartoonist by the age of seventeen, he drew one of the most widely reproduced Civil War satires, and was hailed as “the father of the American cartoon” by the Los Angeles Times in 1895. Deaf since childhood, he became a sought-after raconteur, famous for delivering “chalk talks”, lectures illustrated by rapidly drawn visuals. Touring the nation, his “sparkling, genial discourse about the mysteries of picture-making” — as a contemporary brochure described the act — entranced audiences almost as much as his lightning-quick pen. As he aged, politics gave way to an interest in religious education, and his belief in the transparency of visual communication led him to illustrate bibles in a pictographic idiom. Beard’s first foray into this artform was Picture Puzzles, or, How to Read the Bible by Symbols (1899), followed by the more traditionally illustrated One Hundred Sermon Pictures (1902), and several editions of the volume on display above, Bible Symbols (first published in 1904). He did not invent the hieroglyphic bible — rather, Bible Symbols numbers among the last of this type of book to achieve widespread popularity. According to Benjamin Lindquist, who has written the definitive article on Beard’s life, the earliest known specimen dates to 1687, produced in Augsburg, Germany. As Egyptomania increasingly preoccupied the American mind in the nineteenth century, hieroglyphic bibles became one of the most popular forms of religious literature. The texts and images in Bible Symbols work like a rebus, mixing icons and scripture to provide multimedia access to the word of God. There is an impulse toward the universal here — in a corrupt and fallen world, a new visual language might help recover what was lost when Babel crumbled — and a pedagogic aspect, too. Employed in this way, images become mnemonics, and slow down the eye to inspire deeper contemplation, richer access. Despite questing after timeless truths, Beard was also a fallible man of his era. A hieroglyph of Native Americans stands in for “barbarous people”; a tableau that seemingly connotes “belief” shows people of color crouching before a white missionary. Pictures, just like words, bear a trace of their creator. For another use of the rebus technique in a different religious context, see our post on Buddhist sutras for the illiterate.

public-domain-review

May 7, 2013

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:27.377675

texts-in-mathias-enard-s-compass

Texts in Mathias Enard’s Compass Apr 26, 2017 I calmly listen to this distant melody, I look, from high up, at all these men, all these souls still walking around us: who was Liszt, who was Berlioz, who was Wagner and all the people they knew, Musset, Lamartine, Nerval, an immense network of texts, notes and images, clear, precise, a path visible by me alone that links old Hammer-Purgstall to a whole world of travellers, musicians, poets, that links Beethoven to Balzac, to James Morier, to Hofmannsthal, to Strauss, to Mahler, and to the sweet smoke of Istanbul and Tehran… So reports Franz Ritter, the narrator of Mathias Enard’s latest novel Compass, ostensibly describing the imaginative vantage point given by his first taste of opium. He could, however, equally be describing Enard’s project throughout this extraordinary book, recently translated into English by Charlotte Mandell, and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and New Directions in the US. Compass takes place over the course of one night, as the insomniac, and possibly mortally ill, musicologist Ritter reflects on the history of Orientalism. Or perhaps it would be better to say he refracts, taking the ideas and stories of writers and thinkers who came before him and organising them into new patterns. It is a tapestry of other texts, anecdotes, and pieces of music: many of which are today in the public domain. So, as we did previously with W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, we thought we’d share some of the original texts with you, next to Mathias Enard’s (that is to say, Franz Ritter’s) meditations on them. If Compass has a thesis, it might be that the Orient is a co-constructed imaginative realm, one built by the "East" and "West" in tandem, and with boundaries, both psychological and geographical, which are ever-shifting and porous. Ritter’s stream-of-consciousness is steeped in the voices of people for whom the Orient truly meant something, and his mind often roams in a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world revolutionized by the meeting of East and West: "this exoticism had meaning… over all of Europe the wind of alterity blows, all these great men use what comes to them from the Other to modify the Self, to bastardize it, for genius wants bastardy…" These literary echoes throughout Compass, then, are more than just name-dropping: they indicate that the cosmopolitan mind is teeming with cultural referents, permeable and open to influence from without. It is this cosmopolitanism which Enard celebrates. Note: Franz Ritter is, as already noted, a musicologist, and Enard mentions many musicians whose work we haven’t linked to here, because most good recordings are still within copyright. But we would recommend these as a good soundtrack to your reading: Shahram Nazeri, Giuseppe Verdi, Gustav Mahler, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Pal Esterhazy, Arvo Part, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, August von Adelburg Abramovic, Karol Szymanowski, Felicien David, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Georges Bizet, Franz Schubert. The works featured below are in the order in which they appear in the book. Where possible the English translations of the non-English works are featured, with links to originals given below. The dates in the subheadings refer to the first publication of the original text, or translation if that is the primary focus. The Enard quotes are from the English translation by Charlotte Mandell, and page numbers from the rather fetching edition from Fitzcarraldo Editions, which came out earlier this year. The Work of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) …Hainfeld, the home of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, first great Austrian Orientalist, translator of the Thousand and One Nights and of Hafez’s Divan, historian of the Ottoman Empire, friend of Silvestre de Sacy and of anyone that the little band of Orientalists counted as members at the time, designated sole heir of a very aged Styrian aristocrat who had bequeathed him her title and this castle in 1835, the largest Wasserschloss in the region; Hammer-Purgstall, teacher of Friedrich Rückert, to whom he taught Persian in Vienna, and with whom he translated extracts from Rumi’s Divan-e Shams, a link between a forgotten château in Styria and the Kindertotenlieder, which joins Mahler to the poetry of Hafez and the Orientalists of the nineteenth century. (p. 36) The History of the Assassins: Derived from Oriental Sources, by Joseph Hammer-Purgstall, translated by Oswald Charles Wood; 1835; London, Smith and Elder. See other works by Joseph Hammer-Purgstall, in the original German and translations into other languages, here at the Internet Archive and at Project Gutenberg. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) Did you know that Hainfeld castle also houses monsters and wonders? Of course it’s the home of Hammer-Purgstall the Orientalist, but it’s also the place that inspired Sheridan Le Fanu to write his novel Carmilla, the first vampire story that would make British high society tremble, decades before Dracula… Sheridan Le Fanu spent an entire winter in Hainfeld, a few years before Hammer-Purgstall the Orientalist moved there; Carmilla is inspired by a true story, she says: Count Purgstall did indeed take in one of his orphan relatives named Carmilla, who immediately struck up a profound friendship with his daughter Laura, as if they had always known each other – very soon, they became intimate; they shared secrets and passions. Laura began to dream about fantastic animals that visited her at night, kissed her and caressed her; sometimes, in these dreams, they transformed into Carmilla, until finally Laura wondered if Carmilla was actually a man in disguise, which would explain her agitation. Laura fell ill with a wasting disease that no doctor managed to cure, until the Count heard tell of a similar case, a few miles away: several years before, a young woman died, two round holes in the upper part of her throat, victim of the vampire Millarca Karnstein. Carmilla is none other than the anagram and reincarnation of Millarca; she is the one sucking out Laura’s vitality – the Count would have to kill her and send her back to the grave by a terrifying ritual. (pp. 41 / 43) "Carmilla" in Volume 3 of In a Glass Darkly, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; 1872; London, R. Bentley. See also Ebook and other formats at Project Gutenberg. The Collection of Antiquities by Honoré de Balzac (1838) …Balzac, who in theory felt passionate only about the French and their customs, writing a text on opium – one of his first published texts, at that. Balzac, the first French novelist to include a text in Arabic in one of his novels! Balzac the native of Tours who becomes friends with Hammer-Purgstall the great Austrian Orientalist, even dedicating one of his books to him, The Cabinet of Antiquities. (p. 98) "The Collection of Antiquities" in The Jealousies of a Country Town, by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage; 1899; Philadelphia, The Gebbie Publishing Co. See also Ebook and other formats at Project Gutenberg. Things Seen by Victor Hugo (1899) Victor Hugo the Oriental relates the dying agony of Balzac in Things Seen: M. de Balzac was in his bed, he says, his head resting on a pile of pillows to which they had added red Damascus cushions borrowed from the bedroom sofa. His face was purple, almost black, leaning to the right, beard unshaven, hair grey and cut short, eyes open and staring. An unbearable odour emanated from the bed. Hugo lifted the blanket and took Balzac’s hand. It was covered in sweat. He squeezed it. Balzac did not respond to the pressure. An old woman – standing guard – and a male servant stood on either side of the bed. A candle was burning on a table behind the head of the bed, another on a commode near the door. A silver vase was placed on the bedside table. The man and the woman remained silent with a kind of terror, listening to the dying man groaning noisily, Mme Hanska had gone back to her room, no doubt because she couldn’t bear her husband’s death rattle, his agony: Hugo relates all sorts of horrors about the abscess on Balzac’s leg, which had been lanced a few days before. (p. 117) Things Seen: Essays by Victor Hugo; Boston, Estes and Lauriat. Original French version entitled Choses Vues at the Internet Archive and Wikisource. Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as Related by Herself in Conversations with her Physician by Charles Lewis Meryon (1845). Our camp was much more spartan than those of the explorers of old: they say that Lady Hester Stanhope, first queen of Tadmor, proud English adventuress with steely morals, whose wealth and health the Orient sucked away until her death in 1839 in a village in the Lebanese mountains, needed seven camels to carry her equipment, and that the tent where she received the emirs of the land was by far the most sumptuous in all of Syria; legend has it that, along with her chamber pot (the only indispensable accessory in the desert, she said), the niece of William Pitt transported a gala dinner to Palmyra, a royal dinner where the most refined china and place settings were taken out of the trunks, to the great surprise of the guests; all the sheikhs and emirs in the land were dazzled by Lady Hester Stanhope, they say. (pp. 166–167) Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as Related by Herself in Conversations with her Physician, by Charles Lewis Meryon; 1846; London, Henry Colburn. See also Volume Two and Volume Three at the Internet Archive. The Thousand and One Nights, as translated into French by Joseph-Charles Mardrus (1904) Mardrus translated the entirety of The Thousand and One Nights at sea; he grew up in Cairo, studied medicine in Beirut, Arabic was so to speak his native language, that’s the big advantage he has over us western-born Orientalists, all that time spent learning the language that he saved. The discovery of the Nights in Mardrus’ translation provoked a wave of adaptations, imitations, continuations of the masterpiece, just like fifty years earlier with Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales, Rückert’s poems or Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. This time people thought it was the Orient itself that breathed its force, its eroticism, its exotic power directly into turn-of-the-century art; they loved the sensuality, the violence, the pleasure, the adventures, the monsters and djinns, they copied them, commented on them, multiplied them; they thought they could finally see, without any intermediary, the true face of the eternal and mysterious Orient: but in fact it’s the Orient of Mardrus, still a reflection, another Third-Orient… (p. 232) Le Livre des milles nuits et une nuit, Vol. 15, translated by Joseph-Charles Mardrus; 1904; Paris, Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle. Featured above is the fifteenth and final volume of Mardrus' translation. See scans of the others here at the Internet Archive, though be warned they are courtesy of Google and so are a little lacking in quality, including whole missing portions of pages. For a public domain translation in English we recommend that by Richard Burton. The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer (1818) Wagner read Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Representation in September 1854, just when he was starting to imagine Tristan and Isolde. There is a chapter on love in The World As Will and Representation. Schopenhauer never loved anyone as much as his dog Atma, a Sanskritish dog with the name of the soul. They say that Schopenhauer named his dog as sole heir, I wonder if that’s true… I don’t much remember Schopenhauer’s theories on love any more. I think he separates love as illusion linked to sexual desire on the one hand and universal love, compassion, on the other. I wonder what Wagner made of it. There must be hundreds of pages written on Schopenhauer and Wagner and I haven’t read any. Sometimes life is hopeless. (p. 249) The World as Will and Idea, by Arthur Schopenhauer; 1909; London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ebook and other formats for the English translation at Project Gutenberg. Original German versions at the Internet Archive. Judaism in Music by Richard Wagner (1869) Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, sworn enemies of Wagner, especially Meyerbeer, object of all Wagner’s hatred, a terrifying hatred… Wagner wasn’t without his contradictions: in his Judaism in Music, he insults Meyerbeer, the same Meyerbeer he had buttered up for years, the same Meyerbeer he dreamed of imitating, the same Meyerbeer who helped him put on Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman…Richard Wagner did not measure up to his work; he was hypocritical, like all anti-Semites. But Wagner is not stupid, hence he is operating in bad faith. He is aware that his statements are idiotic. It’s his hatred speaking. He is blinded by his hatred, as he will be by his wife Cosima Liszt during the re-publication of his pamphlet, this time under his own name, twenty years later. Wagner is a criminal. A criminal full of hate. (p. 296) Judaism in Music, by Richard Wagner, translated by Edwin Evans; 1910; London, W. Reeves. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1859) Khayyam, propelled by Edward FitzGerald’s translation, invaded literary Europe; the forgotten mathematician from the province of Khorassan became a leading European poet in 1870. Sarah explained Omar Khayyam’s immense worldwide fame by the universal simplicity of the quatrain form, first of all, and then by the diversity of the corpus: by turns atheist/agnostic or Muslim/hedonist or contemplative lover/inveterate drunkard or mystical drinker, the scholar from Khorassan, as he appears in a thousand or so quatrains that are attributed to him, has something to please everyone… (pp. 409-410). Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in English verse by Edward Fitzgerald; 1901; London, H.W. Bell.

public-domain-review

Apr 26, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:28.413085

alexander-graham-bell-s-tetrahedral-kites-1903-9

Alexander Graham Bell’s Tetrahedral Kites (1903–9) Text by Adam Green Jun 19, 2017 Although best known for developing the practical telephone — for which he became the first, in 1876, to secure a US patent — the Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell is also noted for his work in aerodynamics, a rather more photogenic endeavour perhaps, as evidenced by the wonderful imagery documenting his experiments with tetrahedral kites. The series of photographs depict Bell and his colleagues demonstrating and testing out a number of different kite designs, all based upon the tetrahedral structure, to whose pyramid-shaped cells Bell was drawn as they could share joints and spars and so crucially lessen the weight-to-surface area ratio. The juxtaposition of the era's expected array of suits and somewhat stilted poses, with the stark geometry of these complex abstract structures — which at times look as if born from some new mathematics of a future or alien civilisation — often lend the images a touch of the uncanny, almost anachronistic. This is particularly so in some of the offerings from the National Geographic, painting onto the photographs as they have to emphasise even more the crisp lines and geometric shapes of the unusual structures. Bell began his experiments with tetrahedral box kites in 1898, eventually developing elaborate structures comprised of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk, constructed with the aim of carrying a human through the air. Named Cygnet I, II, and III (for they took off from water) these enormous tetrahedral beings were flown both unmanned and manned during a five year period from 1907 until 1912. The delightful images below have mainly been sourced from three places: Bell's own private journals, which meticulously log his progress not only with text but also with numerous photographs pasted into the pages (from 1903–104); a couple of articles (from 1903 and 1907) in the National Geographic Magazine; and the Bulletin of his Aerial Experiment Association, which he led from its beginning in 1907 until it disbanded in 1909.

public-domain-review

Jun 19, 2017

Adam Green

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2024-05-01T21:44:28.903611

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Photographs of Sea Stars (1917) Text by Adam Green May 24, 2017 These strangely alluring images are from a report by Ludwig Heinrich Philipp Döderlein (1855–1936), a German zoologist who specialized in sea stars, sea urchins, and crinoids. Although Döderlein is best known for his study of marine life in Japan, where he was one of the very first European naturalists to work, from 1879 to 1881, these starfish are actually from the waters around Indonesia, collected during the Siboga Expedition, 1899–1900. Taken upon a surface of black, the images seem to render the name of "starfish" / "sea star" all the more appropriate — almost as though the stars of a night sky, under a human gaze, have exploded enlarged into biological beings.

public-domain-review

May 24, 2017

Adam Green

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2024-05-01T21:44:29.389636

the-maps-of-matrakci-nasuh-ottoman-polymath

The Maps of Matrakçı Nasuh, Ottoman Polymath May 9, 2017 In addition to his important writings in the fields of both mathematics and history, the Bosnian-born polymath and all-round genius Matrakçı Nasuh is best known for his exquisite miniatures depicting various landscapes and urban centres of 16th-century Persia. The images can be found spread across his four historic volumes, with perhaps the most important being Fetihname-i Karabuğdan — now at the library of Istanbul University — which addresses Suleiman the Magnificent's Safavid War of 1532–1555. In the work Matrakçı Nasuh illustrates the cities encountered by the Ottoman army as they marched from Istanbul to Baghdad, then Tabriz (pictured above), and the return journey through Halab and Eskisehir. The name Matrakçı was not, in fact, his name by birth but rather a nickname referring to his invention of a kind of military lawn game called matrak (a word which means "cudgel" or "mace", the main weapon at the heart of the game). The name stuck, and later would come to label its very own genre in Ottoman miniature art, the "Matrakçı style", describing works echoing his penchant for detail and precision of execution, perhaps nowhere better encapsulated than in the famous image of Istanbul from 1536, the last image featured below.

public-domain-review

May 9, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:30.033147

book-of-french-textile-samples-1863

Book of French Textile Samples (1863) May 30, 2017 This delightful book features a collection of nineteenth-century textile samples — in the form of watercolour copies — from the Robert Maison company (about which we couldn't find too much, apart from the fact they were based in Paris). The scanned copy of the book presented here bears the marks of its years, not just in the notes and revisions left by a previous owner (or creator?), but also, on occasion, in more substantial though accidental changes to the designs. Over the decades some of the bolder patterns have imprinted themselves upon their lighter counterparts sat on the opposite page, the two becoming unintentionally combined to create a series of fine new designs. Find below some of our highlights. For more design goodness from times gone by check out also our posts on Shin-Bijutsukai, a Japanese design magazine from 1902, and Examples of Chinese Ornament from 1867.

public-domain-review

May 30, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:30.516690

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Images from the First Colour Publication on Fish (1754) Apr 4, 2017 Originally published in 1719, with a second edition in 1754, Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes can lay claim to being the earliest known publication in colour on fish — in this case, celebrating those hailing from the waters of the East Indies. This wonderful book is the creation of Louis Renard — a publisher, bookseller, and spy for the British Crown (employed by Queen Anne, George I and George II). This latter role, which saw him help guarantee the Protestant succession to the throne by denying James Stuart supplies, was not particularly secret and it seems Renard used the fact to add some intrigue to his books. This work, for example, is actually dedicated to George I, and the title-page describes the publisher as "Louis Renard, Agent de Sa Majesté Britannique". All in all, across the two volumes, the book contains 100 plates bearing 460 hand-coloured engravings — a total of 415 fishes, 41 crustaceans, two stick insects, a dugong and, in a final foldout, a solitary mermaid. The engravings were supposedly based on drawings from life by the artist Samuel Fallours (active 1703–20) which belonged to Baltazar Coyett, Governor of Ambon and Banda (1694–1706), and to Mr Van der Stael, Governor of the Molucca Islands. There is no main text as such, only that found in and amongst the images, which tends to be anecdotal, mainly focusing on recipes as opposed to science. If the illustrations are breathtaking to us now, with all the hours of David Attenborough documentaries under our belts, one can only imagine the impact this would have had on a European audience of the eighteenth century, to which the exotic ocean life of the East would have been virtually unknown. Even for today's most learned pescatologist, however, many of the illustrations might give some cause for surprise. Produced in two volumes, the images in the first part tend to be fairly realistic, but many in the second stray somewhat into the realms of fantasy, despite Renard's ardent claims of authenticity. As Glasgow University Library explains, "many of the fish bear no similarity to any living creatures. Inaccuracies are found in the addition of small human faces, suns, moons and stars to the flanks of fishes and the carapaces of crabs. It would also seem that colours were applied in a rather arbitrary fashion." It's the expressive faces and outlandish colours, in particular, which give so many of the fish a cartoon-like quality, almost as though cast portraits from some sassy ocean-based animation. In 2010, Taschen published Samuel Fallours: Tropical Fishes of the East Indies, which features Samuel Fallours' original illustrations. See also a post about Renard's book on the Biodiversity Heritage Library blog.

public-domain-review

Apr 4, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:30.995694

the-burning-stable-1896

The Burning Stable (1896) Apr 27, 2017 A remarkable short, seemingly of the "actuality" genre, showing a stable on fire with horses being rescued and humans fleeing. Apart from the fact that it comes from the Edison studio, and according to the LOC catalogue is produced by James H. White with William Heise on camera, very little is known about the film. Is it a real fire, as it appears to be? If so, how did the film crew get to the scene so quickly? At this time Edison Studios were in fierce competition with Biograph and were in the habit of ripping off the latter's films. A few months earlier Biograph released Stable on Fire (1896), supposedly pretty much identical in terms of content. Although fires and fire crews were very popular subjects at that time the coincidence seems strange. This, together with what appears to be a vaguely suspicious jump around the 22 second mark, and the highly suspicious presence of the camera at just the right moment, seems to point to it almost certainly being staged. If any one knows any better please do share your thoughts in the comments.

public-domain-review

Apr 27, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:31.504744

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Arcimboldo-esque Composite Portraits of Trades (ca. 1800) Apr 18, 2017 Lovely aquatint print from the London-based publisher Samuel William Fores in which are depicted four composite portraits for the professions of florist, writer, musician, and barber — their features made up entirely from the tools of their trades. Such composite portraits, in which human figures are comprised completely of objects, were pioneered several centuries earlier by the 16th-century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Although the metamorphosis didn't extend as far as the human body itself, a mention should also go to the following century's Nicolas de Larmessin and his series depicting tradesmen clad in outfits comprised of their related objects. The title of "Hieroglyphics" is also worth a note. If, indeed, the print dates from around 1800, then it would place the image soon after the discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops during their invasion of Egyptian — and so at a time when the idea of hieroglyphs would have been very much in the air. Still, the title seems strange in relation to our current understanding of the word as denoting a system of writing in which pictures are used instead of words. In the case of the above image, it as though the act of replacement itself is enough, be it a word or a swathe of face, it does not matter — the whole world seen as renderable in a landscape of objects.

public-domain-review

Apr 18, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:31.941961

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Growing Things: A Film Lesson in “Nature Study” (1928) May 18, 2017 Gardening lessons from the late 1920s, centring on the cultivation of beans, including some wonderful time-lapse footage and inter-titles to match.

public-domain-review

May 18, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:32.384708

the-wise-boys-or-the-entertaining-histories-of-fred-forethought-matt-merrythought-luke-lovebook-and-ben-bee-ca-1842

The Wise Boys: or, The Entertaining Histories of Fred Forethought, Matt Merrythought, Luke Lovebook and Ben Bee (ca. 1842) Mar 30, 2017 This collection of poetic stories — championing the exemplary boyhood behaviour of Fred, Matt, Luke, and Ben — is the work of the American poet Sarah Josepha Buell Hale. Like many female poets of her time Hale often turned her talents to penning verse for children, including, most famously, the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" which was part of her 1830 collection Poems for Our Children. As regards her output aimed at adults, in 1823 she published a collection of her poems The Genius of Oblivion, and four years later, a novel about slavery titled Northwood: Life North and South, making her one of the first novelists to broach the subject (as well as one of the first ever American woman authors). From 1837, for the next four decades, she was editor of the hugely influential Godey's Lady's Book, retiring aged 90 in 1877, the same year the lines of her "Mary Had a Little Lamb" became the first ever recorded speech after Thomas Edison spoke them into his newly invented phonograph. As well as many other novels and poetry collections, Hale can also lay claim, after a 17-year campaign including letters written to five Presidents, to being the person most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States. Hale wore black for most of her adult life as a sign of perpetual mourning for her firstborn son David who died aged seven. It is a sadness reflected in the history of the particular copy of The Wise Boys featured here, which bears on its front endpapers the following inscription: "This book was the property of William Turner Clarke younger brother of Amanda F. Todd. He died at the age of nine years".

public-domain-review

Mar 30, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:32.875981

public-and-private-life-of-animals-1877

Public and Private Life of Animals (1877) May 23, 2017 This collection of acerbic animal fables, originally published in 1842 as Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, boasts among its contributors some of the finest literary minds of mid 19th-century France, including Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel (under the pseudonym of P. J. Stahl). The book is also home to some of the finest work (some featured below) by the caricaturist J. J. Grandville, drawings in which we can see the satirical genius and inventiveness that would be unleashed in full glory just two years later with the publication of his wonderful Un autre monde.

public-domain-review

May 23, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:33.385276

john-mccormack-recordings-1911-1940

John McCormack - Recordings: 1911-1940 Mar 17, 2017 John McCormack (1884–1945) was an Irish tenor renowned for lending his superior diction and breath control to a whole range of operatic and popular song repertoires, including a number of traditional ballads from Ireland. Born in Athlone, County Westmeath, in 1884, McCormack's early musical studies came through his membership of Dublin's Pro-Cathedral Palestrina Choir, and in 1903 he won the prestigious Tenor Award at the annual festival Feis Ceoil. In March of the following year, McCormack became associated with a certain James Joyce, who had dreams of becoming a singer himself. In his biography of Joyce, Richard Ellmann states that "Joyce spent several evenings with him" practising, and the writer was convinced to enter the competition that year (he came third, the Irish Daily Independent stating that he "showed himself possessed of the finest quality voice of any of those competing”). You can read more about McCormack and Joyce's friendship here.

public-domain-review

Mar 17, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:33.845544

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The Flower of Battle: Italian Fighting Manual (ca. 1410) Text by Adam Green Jun 1, 2017 Much as a denizen of the 21st century might turn to YouTube demonstrations or tailored smartphone apps in order to learn or hone certain skills, so the autodidact of the Medieval and Renaissance period would have turned to how-to-guides such as this fine example from early 15th-century Italy — Il Fior di Battaglia (The Flower of Battle). From The Getty, where the one of the copies is held: This manuscript by the greatest fencing-master of the late 1300s, Fiore Furlan dei Liberi da Premariacco, instructs the reader in the intricacies of combat. Lively illustrations of charging horses and armored knights accompany the text. Through words and pictures, the manuscript teaches a variety of fighting techniques including single combat on foot with sword, dagger, and ax, and also mounted combat in all its variations. Nicolò III d'Este, ruler of Ferrara, ordered at least three copies of this text, including this one. Nicolò's interest in such a manual was quite natural, since fighting played an important role in the education of young nobleman, and he himself was raising three sons. As noted above there are a few different versions of this work, Wikipedia offering an impressively detailed account of each (as well as of the life of Fiore Furlan dei Liberi da Premariacco). Here's what it has to say about the code of gold crown and garter seen throughout. The format of instruction is largely consistent across all copies of the treatise. Each section begins with a group of Masters (or Teachers), figures in golden crowns who each demonstrate a particular guard for use with their weapon. These are followed by a master called "Remedio" (remedy) who demonstrates a defensive technique against some basic attack (usually how to use one of the listed guards to defend), and then by his various Scholars (or Students), figures wearing golden garters on their legs who demonstrate iterations and variations of this remedy. After the scholars there is typically a master called "Contrario" (counter), wearing both crown and garter, who demonstrates how to counter the master's remedy (and those of his scholars), who is likewise sometimes followed by his own scholars in garters. In rare cases, a fourth type of master appears called "Contra-Contrario" (counter-counter), who likewise wears the crown and garter and demonstrates how to defeat the master's counter. Some sections feature multiple master remedies or master counters, while some have only one. There are also many cases in which an image in one manuscript will only feature a scholar's garter where the corresponding image in another also includes a master's crown. Depending on the instance, this may either be intentional or merely an error in the art. Below are some selected highlights from the Getty's 80+ page version, including the lovely final page. Appearing after the last section on mounted combat, we are shown two horses, in a closing moment of calm, tethered quietly to a tree. More detailed information on Fiore Furlan dei Liberi's work can be found here on this dedicated site, including an English translation of the text found in this Getty version.

public-domain-review

Jun 1, 2017

Adam Green

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2024-05-01T21:44:34.053411

scenes-from-rip-van-winkle-1903

Scenes from Rip Van Winkle (1903) Apr 12, 2017 Recording made for Colombia Records in which the legendary actor Joseph Jefferson plays the part of Rip Van Winkle, the role for which he had gained worldwide renown. Although this was not Jefferson's first venture into recording — he'd recorded for Berliner Gramophone Company in the previous decade — it was by far his most successful. If you'd like to add some visuals to the audio then check out Jefferson playing the part in the first film adaptation of Washington Irving’s short story in which a man awakes after a twenty-year long sleep to a huge white beard on his face and a much changed world.

public-domain-review

Apr 12, 2017

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2024-05-01T21:44:34.539826

wit-and-wisdom-of-don-quixote-1867

Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote (1867) May 10, 2017 From whole multi-paragraph excerpts to single lines, this wonderful little book dedicates itself, as the title declares, to presenting the "wit and wisdom" to be found in Miguel de Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote. As the preface states, the translator and compiler of the book (a woman named Emma Thompson, or at least so a handwritten note on the title-page to this copy proclaims) very much situates the work in the apparently very Spanish penchant for proverbs. The book is not grouped into distinct sections, each addressing a particular theme, as one might expect publishers to insist on today. Instead, we are faced with an appropriately chaotic and meandering presentation of the unique mind of the "Knight of the Rueful Countenance" — one which offers up such enigmatic treats as "Gifts are good after Easter" and such sage advice as "The bow cannot remain always bent, and relaxation, both of body and mind, is indispensable to all."

public-domain-review

May 10, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:35.071589

the-private-memoirs-and-confessions-of-a-justified-sinner-1824

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) Apr 11, 2017 In August 1823, the writer James Hogg published a letter in the Edinburgh-based Blackwood’s Magazine (see below); the readers of the magazine would probably have known Hogg as a poet and novelist, but this strange letter would have been hard to place. Was it a genuine anecdote? Or a fiction? The letter was titled "A Scots Mummy" and in it, Hogg tells the story of a suicide that had happened a century earlier, seemingly assisted by the Devil himself, and the recent re-discovery of the body which seemed not to have decayed at all. Presented as a curiosity, which the author had not confirmed first-hand but believed was true, the story could have stood alone as a Gothic curio. In fact, it was an ingenious piece of pre-publicity by a writer engaged in a metafictional game with his readers. The following year, Hogg anonymously published The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, in which the details of the story were retold, using the letter in the narrative. In the book, the letter is attributed to James Hogg, whose testimony is doubted by the supposed editor of Justified Sinner. This inserting of Hogg himself and the "real world" into the text, gives the supposed memoirs a tinge of authenticity, and is a classic postmodern gesture before the term had any meaning. An early example of both crime writing and metafiction, Justified Sinner was sorely neglected for a century until the French writer André Gide got his hands on a copy and declared it a masterpiece. The plot still grips today. Two brothers grow up raised by different men: George becomes a nice, rounded young man untroubled by serious intellect, Robert grows into fiercely intelligent and fervently religious Calvinist. The two don’t meet in childhood, but attend the same university. Robert insists on following George around and tormenting him, until eventually George dies in mysterious circumstances. This section of the tale, narrated by the aforementioned "editor", is gothic and strange, but nevertheless holds true to reality. The second half of the book, presented as the "Private Memoirs and Confessions" of Robert, retells the same narrative but from the point of view of the zealous brother. He tells of falling under the influence of a shape-shifting being thought variously to be his doppelgänger, the Devil, and the Czar of Russia. The two halves taken together make up one of the most strikingly original novels in the English language. As a sidenote, Hogg’s grandfather was supposedly the last man to be speaking terms with the fairies of the Border Country, and the Nobel prize winner Alice Munro is a direct descendent of him. Quite the family.

public-domain-review

Apr 11, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:35.533266

what-became-of-the-slaves-on-a-georgia-plantation-1863

What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation? (1863) Mar 21, 2017 One of the richest Americans of the mid 19th-century was a man by the name of Pierce Mease Butler — grandson and heir to the colossal fortune of Major Pierce Butler, a United States Founding Father and amongst the largest slaveholders of his time. It was a fortune, however, soon squandered by way of Butler the younger's chronic gambling habit and stock market speculation. In 1856, a group of trustees was put in charge of his financial assets in an attempt to return him to solvency. After a few years selling off various properties, and unable to raise enough, they decided to sell the “movable property” — the slaves from his Georgia plantation. The sale of approximately 436 men, women, children, and infants took place over the course of two days at the Ten Broeck Race Course, two miles outside of Savannah, Georgia, on March 2nd and 3rd, 1859. It was the largest single slave auction in United States history, earning it the moniker of "The Great Slave Auction". Amongst the slaves and their descendants it also went by another, more evocative name, "The Weeping Time" — an allusion to the incessant rains that poured from start to finish, seen as heaven weeping, and also, no doubt, to the tears of the families ripped apart. Although the organisers said they'd not break up families, it soon proved a hollow promise. The pain of these familial sunderings, as well as the appalling conditions and treatment to which the slaves were subject, was documented in a scathing article in the New York Tribune titled, “What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation.” The work of Mortimer Thomson, a popular journalist of the time, writing under the pseudonym “Q. K. Philander Doesticks”, the piece was published as a stand alone pamphlet in 1863 (featured above). The subtitle "A Sequel to Mrs Kemble's Journal", refers to the book penned by Fanny Kemble, a noted British actress and wife to Pierce Mease Butler (though divorced by the time of the auction), who produced one of the most detailed accounts of a slave plantation in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839. As The Atlantic notes in an excellent article about the auction: The event wasn't just notable because of the size of the auction. In 1859 the country was on the verge of a national bloodbath, and the historic threads that weave through the story of the Weeping Time are so far-reaching and remarkable, it's perplexing that more hasn't been written or remembered about this time.

public-domain-review

Mar 21, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:35.995640

eighteen-hundred-and-eleven-1812

Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812) Text by Adam Green Jun 13, 2017 This poem, which imagines a future Britain in a state of ruin following the Napoleonic Wars, was received so viciously upon its publication as to effectively end prematurely the career of its creator Anna Laetitia Barbauld, one of the day's foremost female literary figures. Following her death in 1825, the subsequent damage done to her reputation contributed to her being largely forgotten by literary history, only to be "rediscovered" in the 1970s and 80s with the advent of feminist literary criticism. Her controversial poem somewhat presciently paints the picture of a Britain in decline, eclipsed by the rising might of America. She aligns this decline not only with an unhealthy obsession with commercial wealth but also directly with participation in the Napoleonic Wars, which at the time of writing Britain was on the verge of losing. And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,While the vext billows, in their distant roar,But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,And whispered fears, creating what they dread;Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here (lines 39–49) Though Barbauld titles her poem after the year in which it was written, it is her evocative and darkly satirical descriptions of Britain's imagined future, fallen and in ruin, which stand out most. In a way it can be seen as a larger meditation upon the passing of time and the inevitable fall of empires. She writes how England's "baseless wealth dissolves in air away,/ Like mists that melt before the morning ray", how "Reynolds [will] be what Raphael was before", and how "Time may tear the garland from her brow,/ And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now".

public-domain-review

Jun 13, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:36.507162

edward-curtis-photographs-of-kwakwaka-wakw-ceremonial-dress-and-masks-ca-1914

Edward Curtis’ Photographs of Kwakwaka’wakw Ceremonial Dress and Masks (ca. 1914) Mar 29, 2017 The Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (or Kwakiutl) are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast, covering the territory of British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland, and on islands around Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. United by the common language of Kwak'wala, the broad group can be divided into 13 nations, each with its own clan structure and distinct histories. According to Kwakwaka'wakw folklore their ancestors (‘na’mima) came to a given spot — by way of land, sea, or underground — in the form of ancestral animals that upon arrival shed their animal appearance and became human. The first documented contact with Westerners was in 1792 during the expedition led by English officer Captain George Vancouver, and was soon followed by colonies of Europeans settling on Canada's West Coast. As was often the way, with settlers came disease and the Kwakwaka’wakw population dropped by up to 75% between 1830 and 1880. Their distinctive ideas about wealth — that status came not from how much you owned but how much you were able to give away — came to the particular attention of the US anthropologist Franz Boas, who wrote extensively on their elaborate gift-giving ceremonies known as "potlach". The ceremonial practice was also a particular target of Christian missionaries who saw it as a major obstacle to their "civilising" mission, and the Canadian government banned the practise in 1885 (although the act was soon amended, proving impossible to enforce). The photographs of the ceremonial dress and masks of the Kwakwaka'wakw presented here are the creation of American photographer and ethnologist Edward Curtis (1868–1952), famous for his work with Native American people. Part of a project funded by banking magnate J.P. Morgan, these photographs are from the collection held at the Library of Congress, and contain many images not published in Curtis' enormous twenty-volume The North American Indian. In 2015, Taschen produced their epic 768-page The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios, which gathers Curtis’ entire American Indian portfolio into one publication.

public-domain-review

Mar 29, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:36.946375

geographical-fun-being-humourous-outlines-of-various-countries-1868

Geographical Fun: Being Humourous Outlines of Various Countries (1868) Text by Adam Green Jun 6, 2017 This series of fantastic anthropomorphic maps of European countries, each footnoted by a witty quatrain, was produced by London publisher Hodder and Stoughton in the 1860s. The images here are separate prints from the Library of Congress, but they also can be found on the Internet Archive in book form, the title page of which credits the introduction and descriptive lines to a certain "Aleph", the alias of London surgeon and "frequent contributor to periodical literature" William Harvey. Although in the few recent mentions we can find of Geographical Fun Harvey is credited as the artist behind these wonderful maps, we wonder if this is really true. The most convincing case against this is that in the very first line of his introduction Harvey states the following: The young lady who is responsible for these Sketches is now in her fifteenth year, and her first idea of Map Drawing is traceable to her meeting with a small figure of Punch riding on a Dolphin, and contrived to represent England. The thought occurred to her when seeking to amuse a brother confined to his bed by illness. Given that he goes on to give the book's purpose as "educational" and hopes it might "prove of service to young scholars", I suppose it is conceivable that the teenage sketcher could be a ruse to encourage closer connection to his youthful audience, but it seems maybe a little far-fetched. And perhaps it is better to take Harvey by his word, and imagine these excellently executed figures as the creation of a teenage girl, perhaps a family friend, or even his own daughter, too shy to have her name in lights. The Library of Congress offers this description of the twelve plates that follow: The resulting fanciful caricatures include England in the form of Queen Victoria; Scotland as a gallant Piper struggling through the bogs; Wales in the form of Owen Glendowr; Ireland as a Peasant, happy in her baby's smile; France as an Empress of cooks, fashions, and the dance; Spain and Portugal joined in lasting amity; Italy as a revolutionary figure complete with liberty cap; Prussia in the personages of Friedrich Wilhelm and Prime Minister Bismarck; Holland and Belgium as female figures who represent a land . . . and perfect art made grand; Denmark as a female figure with ice skates; and Russia as the classic bear.

public-domain-review

Jun 6, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:37.404567

the-spinning-sow-1673

The Spinning Sow (1673) Apr 13, 2017 In this 17th-century Dutch engraving a team of pigs are shown spinning flax, while in the corner a woman — who'd normally be associated with the work — sleeps. Across the top runs the rhyme "Die met gemack sijn kost wil winnen // Die set sijn Varcken aen het spinnen", which can be roughly translated as "He who easily wants to make a living / should put his pig to spinning". Rather than a serious suggestion for female empowerment through porcine labour, we can almost certainly take this to be satirical in tone. The artist here seems most likely to be referencing, at least to some level of remove, a popular medieval motif of the "spinning sow", an image with often distinct misogynist associations. As Malcolm Jones explains in his (excellent) article "Folklore Motifs in Late Medieval Art III: Erotic Animal Imagery" (in Folklore journal, 1991). 'La Truie qui file' was a very popular motif in Northern Europe during the later Middle Ages, especially with the carvers of misericords, but it appears also in manuscript margins, as a house/inn-sign, as well as in early prints, e.g. a South German example dated 1488 which is untypically-provided with a text which reveals that — in this instance at least — the application is misogynist: nowadays men have no decent shirts or trousers to put on as women no longer, as in former times, work at their spindles. This sloth brings immorality with it, and men, both married and single, are warned against prostitutes and bawds. Instead of looking for any good at their hands, one should observe these swine and learn from them. The spinning sow herself complains that flax has become dear as women no longer pursue their work but want to be men and masters. ... With women on top, the world is turned upside down, in these wicked times in which we live, we should hardly be surprised to see a sow spinning and urging on her piglets! In this way the print could be seen as a misogynist take on the popular "World Turned Upside Down" theme. However, we imagine the text at the bottom of the image might perhaps illuminate more, so if any Dutch speakers want to enlighten us in the comments it would be very welcome! Likewise for the related image below from the following year. There is almost certainly something going on regarding the Bernhard von Galen, the Prince-bishop of Münster, who was (be it coincidence or not) nicknamed Zwijnenbisschop (the Swine Bishop), on account of the famous export product of his principality, and also, perhaps, because it wasn't too far a leap from the name of Bernhard to Berend to "beer" (i.e. boar / male pig). More on this and an ingenious "hidden pig portrait" of the Bishop here. Anyhow, this was actually meant to be a relatively quick post on a striking image but we've ended (as is so often the case) being dragged down some unexpected rabbit holes, made the more long and winding perhaps by lack of Dutch skills (not to mention Medieval / Early Modern iconography) — so any help would be appreciated!

public-domain-review

Apr 13, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:37.736084

the-war-art-of-paul-nash-1917-1944

The War Art of Paul Nash (1917–1944) May 11, 2017 The work of the English artist Paul Nash (1889–1946) — one of the most important landscape artists of the twentieth century — entered the public domain this year in many countries around the world. It is in his depictions of the destroyed and broken landscapes of the First and Second World War, which we are celebrating in this post, that perhaps we see Nash's talent and his engagement with modernity most acutely visible. As the art historian T. J. Clark comments, "it seems that the 20th century only came to Nash, as something paintable, in the form of total war". Nash spent the few years preceding the war studying art in London — including a curtailed stint at the Slade, with Ben Nicholson and Dora Carrington among others — followed by a few exhibitions, on occasion with his also very talented brother John. With the outbreak of the First World War Nash enlisted, albeit reluctantly, as a private for home service in the Second Battalion, a position which allowed him time to continue making art without too much interruption. In the summer of 1916, however, Nash began officer training and by February the following year was on the Western Front at the Ypres Salient as a second lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment. A relatively quiet few months in the region spared him the full intensity of the Front, before he had to be airlifted back to London an invalid after falling into a trench. A few days later, in an assault on their position known as Hill 60, most of his unit was killed. While recuperating for his injuries, Nash produced a series of drawings, working from sketches made at the Front, and exhibited them in June to a positive reception. Encouraged by the response he succesfully applied to become an official war artist, and in November 1917 returned to the Ypres Salient as a uniformed observer complete with batman and driver. After six weeks at the Front, working at a frantic pace and taking frequent risks to get as close as possible to the action, Nash emerged with what he described as "fifty drawings of muddy places". Over the next years he would use these drawings to create many of the iconic paintings featured below. The interwar period saw Nash continue to push boundaries with his work, taking it into ever more surreal and experimental realms — his "love of the monstrous and magical", as he described it, leading him "beyond the confines of natural appearances into unreal worlds”. With the outbreak of World War Two the War Artists' Advisory Committee appointed Nash as a full-time salaried war artist post attached to the Royal Air Force and the Air Ministry. The works he produced, not without controversy, would become ever-more abstract, culminating in his final piece for the WAAC entitled Battle of Germany in September 1944. Eighteen months later, on 11 July 1946, he died in his sleep from heart failure brought on by the severity of his long-term asthma.

public-domain-review

May 11, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:38.227753

the-hawaiian-quintette-1913

The Hawaiian Quintette (1913) Jun 27, 2017 Selection of tracks recorded by The Hawaiian Quintette for Victor in 1913, a series of recordings which went a long way toward establishing Hawaiian music as a significant genre on mainland US. More songs of the group can be streamed from the Library of Congress National Jukebox site

public-domain-review

Jun 27, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:38.660020

aratea-making-pictures-with-words-in-the-9th-century

Aratea: Making Pictures with Words in the 9th Century Mar 14, 2017 While popularised by Guillaume Apollinaire’s wonderful Calligrammes from 1918, the art of making images through the novel arrangement of words upon the page can be traced back many centuries. Some of the earliest examples of these “calligrams” are to be found in a marvellous 9th-century manuscript known as the Aratea. Each page of the Aratea has a poem on the bottom half — written by the 3rd-century BC Greek poet Aratus and translated into Latin by a young Cicero — describing an astronomical constellation. This constellation is then beautifully drawn above the poetry; the drawings however are themselves made up of words taken from Hyginus’ Astronomica. The passages used to form the images describe the constellation which they create on the page, and in this way they become tied to one another: neither the words or images would make full sense without the other there to complete the scene. Also, note the red dots on each picture: these show where the stars appear in the sky. This remarkable object brings together nearly 2000 years of cultural history. Making use of two Roman texts on astronomy written in the 1st century BC, the manuscript was created in Northern France in about 820. It then found its way into the library of the Harley family in England, before being sold to the nation in 1752 under the same Act of Parliament which created the British Museum.

public-domain-review

Mar 14, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:39.125853

yellow-journalism-the-fake-news-of-the-19th-century

Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century Text by Adam Green Feb 21, 2017 It is perhaps not so surprising to hear that the problem of "fake news" — media outlets adopting sensationalism to the point of fantasy — is nothing new. Although, as Robert Darnton explained in the NYRB recently, the peddling of public lies for political gain (or simply financial profit) can be found in most periods of history dating back to antiquity, it is in the late 19th-century phenomenon of "Yellow Journalism" that it first seems to reach the widespread outcry and fever pitch of scandal familiar today. Why yellow? The reasons are not totally clear. Some sources point to the yellow ink the publications would sometimes use, though it more likely stems from the popular Yellow Kid cartoon that first ran in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, and later William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, the two newspapers engaged in the circulation war at the heart of the furore. Although these days his name is somewhat synonymous with journalism of the highest standards, through association with the Pulitzer Prize established by provisions in his will, Joseph Pulitzer had a very different reputation while alive. After purchasing The New York World in 1884 and rapidly increasing circulation through the publication of sensationalist stories he earned the dubious honour of being the pioneer of tabloid journalism. He soon had a competitor in the field when his rival William Randolph Hearst acquired the The New York Journal in 1885 (originally begun by Joseph's brother Albert). The rivalry was fierce, each trying to out do each other with ever more sensational and salacious stories. At a meeting of prominent journalists in 1889 Florida Daily Citizen editor Lorettus Metcalf claimed that due to their competition “the evil grew until publishers all over the country began to think that perhaps at heart the public might really prefer vulgarity”. The phenomenon can be seen to reach its most rampant heights, and most exemplary period, in the lead up to the Spanish-American War — a conflict that some dubbed "The Journal's War" due to Hearst's immense influence in stoking the fires of anti-Spanish sentiment in the U.S. Much of the coverage by both The New York World and The New York Journal was tainted by unsubstantiated claims, sensationalist propaganda, and outright factual errors. When the USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on the evening of 15 February 1898, huge headlines in the Journal blamed Spain with no evidence at all. The phrase, "remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain", became a populist rousing call to action. The Spanish–American War began later that year. As we've witnessed over recent weeks, from certain mouths the use of the term "fake news" has strayed from simply describing factually incorrect reporting. Likewise would those in power paste the label of "yellow journalism" on factually correct reporting which didn't quite paint the picture they'd like? Yes, indeed. As Timeline reports, in 1925 a certain Benito Mussolini derided reports of his ill health as being lies by the "yellow press", saying the papers were "ready to stop at nothing to increase circulation and to make more money". The reports, however, turned out to be factually accurate. He'd go onto rule the country for another eighteen years. Featured below are a selection of illustrations from the wonderful Puck magazine commenting on the phenomenon, all found in the collection of the Library of Congress.

public-domain-review

Feb 21, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:40.100284

miniatures-from-a-12th-century-medical-and-herbal-collection

Miniatures from a 12th-century Medical and Herbal Collection Jan 26, 2017 Wonderful series of miniatures from a late 12th-century manuscript thought to hail from England or Northern France, once owned by the monastery at Ourscamps just north of Paris, and now in the collection at the British Library (BL Sloane 1975). As well as the delightfully abstract depictions of herbal plants (including Cannabis), a variety of medieval medical procedures are also shown, such as cauterization and the removal of haemorrhoids. The manuscript is home to more than two-hundred of these images, below is a selection of some of our favourites.

public-domain-review

Jan 26, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:40.561962

a-journey-round-my-room-1794-1871

A Journey Round my Room (1794 / 1871) Mar 2, 2017 In 1790, Xavier de Maistre was 27 years old, and a soldier in the army of the Sardinian Kingdom, which covered swathes of modern-day Northern Italy and Southern France. An impetuous young soldier, he was placed under house-arrest in Turin for fighting an illegal duel; there is no record of what happened to the other guy. It was during the 42 days of his confinement here that he wrote the manuscript that would become Voyage autour de ma chambre. Inspired by the works of Laurence Sterne, with their digressive and colloquial style, de Maistre decided to make the most of his sentence by recording an exploration of the room as a travel journal. Like a modern teenager cataloguing their daily routine in a series of finely-tuned Instagram posts, de Maistre’s book imbues the tour of his chamber with great mythology and grand scale. As he wanders the few steps that it takes to circumnavigate the space, his mind spins off into the ether. It parodies the travel journals of the eighteenth-century (such as A Voyage Around the World by Louis de Bougainville, 1771), and could be read today as an early take on the modern vogue for "psychogeography" — each tiny thing that he encounters sends de Maistre into rhapsodies, and mundane journeys become magnificent voyages: But you must not let yourself think that instead of keeping my promise to describe my journey around my room, I am beating the bush to see how I can evade the difficulty. This would be a great mistake on your part. For our journey is really going: and, while my soul, falling back on her own resources, was in the last chapter threading the mazy paths of metaphysics, I had so placed myself in my arm-chair… De Maistre reportedly did not think much of the work, but his elder brother Joseph, the renowned philosopher and counter-revolutionary, was so impressed with what he read that he arranged for it to be published, much to his younger brother's surprise. By the time of its publication in 1794 Xavier had left the service, after his home region of Savoy had been annexed by the French Revolutionary Army. He went on to join the Russian army, and moved to Saint Petersburg, where he wrote a sequel, Night Voyage Around my Room. It was clearly a difficult follow-up: he began writing it in 1799, but didn’t finish it for another twenty-five years. The edition featured here is an 1871 translation into English, we believe the first, by someone named Henry Attwell who also provides a "notice of the author's life". A few more English editions have appeared of late, most recently as a 2016 reissue by New Directions, who published it as Voyage Around My Room with a translation by the poet Stephen Sartarelli.

public-domain-review

Mar 2, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:40.870628

the-pioneer-ov-simplified-speling-vol-1-no-1-1912

The Pioneer ov Simplified Speling, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1912) Text by Adam Green Jan 31, 2017 Most of us at some time or other have likely been frustrated by the inconsistencies of the English language, though perhaps not so much as to dedicate our lives to reforming it. Some people, however, have (and, indeed, still do). Enter the "Simplified Speling Soesiety", a group of passionate spelling reformists active in early 20th-century Britain, who boasted George Bernard Shaw among their members. If language can be likened to an ancient city, as Wittgenstein suggested, then the "Simplfied Speling Sosiety" came armed with a fleet of bulldozers and a set of fairly radical architectural plans. Their ideas were laid out in the 1911 treatise Simplified Spelling: An Appeal to Common Sense (see below), and given a regular outlet in the form of their journal The Pioneer, the inaugural edition of which is featured above. The journal, which ran into excess of thirty issues and was written entirely in the new spelling system, featured a regular "Esai Competishun", a "Noets and Nyuez" section, as well as a roundup of "Praiz and Prejoodis" in which they detailed both their positive and negative press. Founded in 1908, the "Simplfied Speling Soesiety" were certainly not the first such group (despite the title of their journal). The desire to whip the oddities of English spelling into some kind of more logical order can be traced back to the 16th and 17th centuries, and gathered particular pace in the late 19th century with the efforts, for example, of the American Philological Society who, in 1876, recommended the adoption of eleven reformed spellings for immediate use — are→ar, give→giv, have→hav, live→liv, though→tho, through→thru, guard→gard, catalogue→catalog, (in)definite→(in)definit, wished→wisht. One major American newspaper, the Chicago Tribune — whose editor and owner, Joseph Medill, sat on the Council of the Spelling Reform Association — actually began to use these new spellings. In 1906, the Simplified Spelling Board was established, Andrew Carnegie being a founding member and substantial donor. In April that year they published a list of 300 "simplified" words which caught the attention and approval of Theodore Roosevelt, who ordered the Government Printing Office to start using them immediately. Sadly for the reformists, later that year Congress intervened and the old spellings were reintroduced, though some of the new suggestions did survive and are used today, such as anaemia/anæmia→anemia and mould→mold.

public-domain-review

Jan 31, 2017

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:41.360460

a-selection-from-the-met-s-public-domain-collection-now-free-from-all-restrictions

A Selection from The MET’s Public Domain Collection, Now Free from All Restrictions Feb 16, 2017 Ever since The Public Domain Review began we've long harboured fantasies about the Metropolitan Museum joining the growing ranks of those institutions (The Getty, New York Public Library, and Rijksmuseum, among others) who have opened up their digital copies of public domain works, making them free from all restrictions on use. Now, after a statement made last week, The MET have done just that — making all digital copies of their incredible public domain collection available under a CC0 license and in high resolution. While included in the vast lot of more than 200,000 images is a wonderful selection of the well known — Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet, etc. — we present here our highlights from the perhaps lesser known corners (though we couldn't resist sneaking in a Paul Klee). This is the product of a casual morning's browse in which we could only get through the first 6,000 — that's not even 3% — so we highly encourage you to jump in yourselves and make use of their slick and very comprehensive filtering system. And if that wasn't enough, many of the pieces are accompanied by curatorial commentary offering the stories behind the works. Treasures await!

public-domain-review

Feb 16, 2017

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:41.681361

rainbows-in-art

Rainbows in Art Nov 15, 2016 Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life!The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray!(Lord Byron, The Bride of Abydos) Depictions spanning more than 800 years – in chronological order – of that most enigmatic of weather phenomena, the rainbow: from Noah's sign and the Book of Revelation, through to 18th-century optics, the epic landscapes of Romanticism, and modernist abstraction.

public-domain-review

Nov 15, 2016

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:42.145460

within-our-gates-1920

Within Our Gates (1920) Text by Adam Green Nov 17, 2016 The oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director, Within Our Gates is a searing account of the US racial situation during the early twentieth century, including the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of Southern blacks to cities in the North, and the emergence of the "New Negro". Directed by Oscar Micheaux, the film is one of the earliest and finest examples in the genre of "race films". Produced outside the main Hollywood machine, these films were purposefully made for an all-black audience, featured black actors, and became important arenas through which representations of African-Americans in mass culture were contested. The plot of Within Our Gates centres around a a mixed-race school teacher named Sylvia Landry who travels North to seek funds for a rural school in the Deep South for poor black children. Falling in love with a black doctor (who is “passionately engaged in social questions”), she reveals her family's past, including the lynchings of her parents and the story behind her own European ancestry. From the American Historical Association: "Despite the rickety plot turns ... Micheaux offers a searing portrait of the ideology of white supremacy. Overturning prevailing wisdom, portrayed notably in D. W. Griffith’s film epic Birth of a Nation (1915), Within Our Gates underscores that racism is fueled by ignorance and hinders national unity. Whereas Griffith’s film suggests that the revelation of blacks’ true capacities and natures would restore racial unity and fraternity among northern and southern whites, Micheaux counters that if northern whites could see through the fog of white southern bigotry they would recognize that blacks were citizens worthy of both rights and respect."

public-domain-review

Nov 17, 2016

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:42.641841

the-trouvelot-astronomical-drawings-1882

The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings (1882) Text by Adam Green Dec 14, 2016 The French artist, astronomer and amateur entomologist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot is noted for two major contributions in his lifetime. The first, and the one we are celebrating in this post, is the 7000 or so illustrations he created from his astronomical observations, the quality of which reached their zenith in the 15 exquisite pastel works which were published as The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings in 1882 (and reproduced in this post). Trouvelot was invited onto the staff of the Harvard College Observatory when the then director Joseph Winlock saw the quality of his illustrations, and in 1875 he was invited to use the U. S. Naval Observatory's 26-inch refractor for a year. As well as his illustrations, Trouvelot also published some 50 scientific papers, and was credited with discovering "veiled spots" on the Sun in 1875. The second and rather more unfortunate legacy Trouvelot left the world was the accidental widespread introduction of the highly destructive European Gyspy moth onto North American soil. With the intention of interbreeding Gypsy moths with silk worms to develop a silkworm industry, he'd brought some egg masses over from Europe in the mid-1860s and began raising gypsy moth larvae in the forest behind his house. It is unclear what exactly happened, but some of the larvae ended up escaping into the nearby woods. Although he reportedly notified some nearby entomologists and relevant officials no action was taken. A few decades later the species was rife.

public-domain-review

Dec 14, 2016

Adam Green

collection

2024-05-01T21:44:43.124082