The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
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Wilson Bentley, a self-taught farmer in Vermont, captured thousands of snowflakes on film, revealing their intricate designs and leaving a lasting legacy in meteorology and the study of nature’s frozen wonders.
Dutch astronomer and council communist Anton Pannekoek saw the stars through both a telescope and a political lens—his drawings of the Milky Way reveal how perception, experience, and ideology shape our view of the cosmos.
Kidnapped from West Africa as a child and brought to Boston, Wheatley became the first African-American woman published in English, using her poetry to navigate freedom, fame, and the politics of her time.
Francis Galton’s experiments in biometric detection promised a revolution in crime-solving, but also laid the groundwork for racialized thinking that echoed into modern genetics.
Long before they became symbols of climate change, polar bears helped shape Charles Darwin’s revolutionary ideas about how species adapt to their environments.
In Georgian Britain, Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine sparked panic over “beastly” side effects, exposing how new science can collide with old beliefs.
Long before modern science warned of global warming, the Founding Fathers believed human activity was reshaping the planet’s climate—and they set out to prove it.
At the turn of the 20th century, mathematicians, mystics, and modernists blurred the line between physics and philosophy. Their search for a hidden spatial realm—the so-called “fourth dimension”—transformed art, inspired the occult, and reimagined the very structure of reality.
With skillful pigeon portraits and a daring act of literary piracy, Pauline Knip secured fame, scandal, and a place in art history.
Centuries before photography, the camera obscura transformed ordinary rooms into magical spaces, casting the outside world inside and revealing how light, shadow, and perspective shaped early modern visions of reality.
In the early 20th century, architects and artists like Hugh Ferriss drew on the myths and monuments of ancient Babylon to imagine futuristic skylines—melding ziggurats with modernism in a visionary blend of the past and the possible.
For centuries, physicians used urine to diagnose disease, predict death, and even determine sexual history—analyzing its color, consistency, and contents with remarkable confidence.
The Mughal emperors in India faced a sartorial quandary: Should they continue wearing their traditional Central Asian attire or adopt the lighter cotton clothing of this warmer climate?
From dissecting hearts to designing ornithopters, James Bell Pettigrew saw spirals as the blueprint of nature—but his grand vision was lost to history.
Labelled a “cretin” and “imbecile” in his lifetime, the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind had profound talents when it came to drafting the feline form and inspired later French Realists, early psychiatric theorists, and Romantic visions of the artist as outsider.
After weeks of watching young tendrils slowly corkscrew their way toward the sun, Charles Darwin invented a system for making botanic motion visible to the naked eye.
Associated Authors
Ava Kofman is a journalist. She is the 2023 recipient the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism.
Jon Crabb is an editor at British Library Publishing.
Keith C. Heidorn was a meteorologist and climatologist.
Vincent Carretta is a professor and author specializing in 18th-century literature.
Erica X Eisen researches and writes about art history.
Dr. Raphael Calel is a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
Simran Agarwal is a researcher and writer based in Mumbai.
Mike Jay is an author, cultural historian, and curator.
Natalie Lawrence is a writer, researcher, and illustrator living in London.
Lauren Collee is a writer and researcher.
Kirsten Tambling is an art historian specializing in 18th-century art.
Michael Engelhard is a writer and wilderness guide.
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