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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From pigs executed for murder to rats defended in court, medieval legal systems once put animals and even objects on trial—revealing how law has long been used to impose order on a world that can seem chaotic and unpredictable.
From Buddhist monks to Renaissance musicians, fingers and palms once served as portable, visual, and kinesthetic tools for storing knowledge.
Known as the “German Princess,” Mary Carleton was a notorious 17th-century impostor whose publicized life of bigamy and deception became a foundational influence on the English novel and the female grifter archetype.
The often-uncredited work of women shaped how modern literature was written, revised, and published.
By Christine Jacobson in Literature | Public Domain Review | English | Guide to Language Arts and Writing
Photographs taken during and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre document the scale of the violence against Greenwood, reveal how white participants framed the destruction, and shape how this history is understood today.
In the late 1800s, a constructed language spread across Europe and the United States before internal conflicts and the rise of Esperanto led to its decline.
By Arika Okrent in Language | Public Domain Review | English | Guide to Linguistics: The Science of Language
In 1890, American historian Henry Adams traveled to the South Pacific and worked with Tahiti’s royal family to create a unique blend of memoir, ethnography, and colonial history that recorded the island’s culture and past.
Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal blends Enlightenment rationalism with occult superstition, providing detailed entries and striking illustrations of Hell’s most infamous demons, from Astaroth to Belphégor.
In 1889, Elizabeth Bisland set out on a globe-spanning journey to rival Nellie Bly, combining courage, literary talent, and a sharp intellect to make history in one of the most remarkable travel feats of the 19th century.
In Musaeum Clausum, Thomas Browne catalogs imagined books, strange objects, and rare curiosities, revealing how early-modern thinkers sought to preserve and make sense of the fragile and fleeting treasures of the past.
The life and memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi reveal the invention of modern clowning, the physical and emotional toll of the stage, and the enduring influence of his performances on theater and popular culture.
In midsummer Strasbourg, a strange contagion compelled citizens to dance for days without rest, leaving historians to unravel whether fear, faith, or mass hysteria fueled the frenzy.
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, shaped by personal loss and her love of nature, tells the story of an orphaned girl who restores a forgotten garden—and changes the lives of those around her.
In 1899, Charles Godfrey Leland published Aradia, a “gospel of the witches” that drew on Italian folklore—but new research suggests the writer and medium Roma Lister may have played a hidden role in shaping the text and, ultimately, the modern revival of witchcraft.
The 18th-century Bildungsroman '"`UNIQ--nowiki-000000A6-QINU`"'René, or: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences'"`UNIQ--nowiki-000000A7-QINU`"', critiqued hegemonic systems of church and state through the artful combination of multiple literary genres.
Solitary confinement began as a Quaker-inspired experiment in silence and moral reform in early American prisons, but over time its redemptive intent gave way to harsh, isolating punishment that remains in use today.
In 1872, Victoria Woodhull defied every expectation of her time—running for president, speaking before Congress, publishing revolutionary ideas, and challenging laws, norms, and social hierarchies—to fight for women’s rights, labor justice, and personal freedom.
From seasonal cycles and reincarnation to cosmic destruction and rebirth, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers developed competing theories of how time repeats—and what that repetition means for human life.
Ornamental gardens and Alpine-style cottages transformed the English countryside into miniature Swiss landscapes, blending Romantic ideals with playful kitsch.
Ostrich feathers once drove global fashion and trade, revealing the origins of sustainable practices and ethical awareness in the plume industry.
Robert Hunt’s 19th-century fusion of scientific inquiry and poetic imagination shows how empirical discovery and artistic expression can illuminate the natural world together.
From accidental trips in London parks to the hallucinatory landscapes of Alice in Wonderland, magic mushrooms shaped folklore and visions of fairyland in 19th-century Britain.
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
Ray Davis is an essayist and publisher.
Jon Crabb is an editor at British Library Publishing.
Vincent Carretta is a professor and author specializing in 18th-century literature.
Simran Agarwal is a researcher and writer based in Mumbai.
Keith C. Heidorn was a meteorologist and climatologist.
A.D. Manns is a historian and writer.
Arika Okrent is an author and linguist.
Claire Hall is a historian of ancient Greek science and religion.
Ned Pennant-Rea is a London-based editor and writer.
Jane Brox is the author of five award-winning non-fiction books.
Laura Kolb is an associate professor of English at Baruch College specializing in early modern literature.
Ava Kofman is a journalist. She is the 2023 recipient the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism.
Erica X Eisen researches and writes about art history.
Christine Jacobson is a cultural heritage professional.
Whitney Rakich is a writing tutor at Yale University.
Mike Jay is an author, cultural historian, and curator.
Kirsten Tambling is an art historian specializing in 18th-century art.
Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and editor-in-chief of Belt Magazine.
Kensy Cooperrider is a cognitive scientist, writer, teacher, and podcaster.
Natalie Lawrence is a writer, researcher, and illustrator living in London.
Hunter Dukes is the managing editor of the Public Domain Review and Cabinet Magazine.
Frederika Tevebring is a lecturer in global cultures and interdisciplinary education at King’s College London.
Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is the chair of the department of English at Dartmouth College.
Dr. Raphael Calel is a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
Lauren Collee is a writer and researcher.
Dobrota Pucherová is a researcher, author, and editor specializing in world literature.
Andrew McConnell Stott is a professor in the English department at the University of Southern California specializing in British popular culture from the 16th to 19th centuries.
Matthew Goodman is a New York Times–bestselling author of five books, including The City Game and Eighty Days, whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Review.
Michael Engelhard is a writer and wilderness guide.
Seán Williams writes and broadcasts on German and comparative cultural history.
Nicholas Humphrey is a British theoretical psychologist whose work explores the evolution of consciousness, perception, and social intelligence.
Claire Preston is a professor of early modern literature at Cambridge, specializing in the intersection of 17th-century science and rhetoric. Renowned for her award-winning work on Sir Thomas Browne and Edmund Spenser, she explores how the “New Science” and the era’s information overload shaped English prose and the cultural history of the natural world.
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