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the-celestial-atlas-of-andreas-cellarius-1660
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The Celestial Atlas of Andreas Cellarius (1660)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Oct 4, 2018
Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660), an atlas of the stars from the Dutch Golden Age of cartography, maps the structure of the heavens in twenty-nine extraordinary double-folio spreads. We are presented with the motions of the celestial bodies, the stellar constellations of the northern hemisphere, the old geocentric universe of Ptolemy, the newish heliocentric one of Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe’s eccentric combination of the two — in which the Moon orbits the Earth, and the planets orbit the Sun, but the Sun still orbits the Earth. The marginal area of each brightly coloured map is a hive of activity: astronomers bent over charts debate their findings, eager youngsters direct their quadrants skywards, and cherubs fly about with pet birds in tow.
The life of the Dutch-German creator of the folio, Andreas Cellarius, has only come down to us in skeleton form. He was born around 1596 in a small town near Worms and spent his adult life as a schoolmaster in Amsterdam, the Hague and finally Hoorn. Around 1637 he was appointed rector of a Latin school in Hoorn where he wrote the Harmonia Macrocosmica and all his other scholarly works (including one on designing impregnable fortifications).
Intended as a historical introduction for two-volume treatise on cosmography, only this first part, printed by the Amsterdam publisher Johannes Janssonius in 1660, was ever realised. In 1708, some forty years or so after Cellarius' death, the Amsterdam publishers Gerard Valk and Petrus Schenk the Younger published a version just containing the plates, and it is this later edition from which many of the images in this post come.
The highlights we've featured here all sourced from the digital repository of Stanford University Libraries, however in two separate collections each with different licenses regarding sharing and re-use. Six are from The Glen McLaughlin Map Collection of California as an Island and published under the Public Domain Mark and seven are from The Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection which is (frustratingly and for seemingly no good reason) published under a CC BY-NC-SA license (so be careful how you use those).
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public-domain-review
|
Oct 4, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:07.670373
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-celestial-atlas-of-andreas-cellarius-1660/"
}
|
kumataro-ito-s-illustrations-of-nudibranchs-from-the-uss-albatross-philippine-expedition-ca-1908
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Kumataro Ito’s Illustrations of Nudibranchs from the USS Albatross’ Philippine Expedition (ca. 1908)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Nov 1, 2018
If you ask people what the most spectacular creatures on Earth are some might say the flamingos of the Andes, the birds-of-paradise of Papua New Guinea, or the tropical fish of the Galapagos. How many would say sea slugs? Yet the roughly 3,000 species in the family nudibranchia are legitimate contenders, coming as they do in a delightful, dizzying array of shapes, patterns and colours. Though most abundant in shallow and warm waters, nudibranchs can be found from the Arctic to the Antarctic, down to a depth of 2,500 metres. The barely believable forms of these horned marine wonders have been captured by modern divers and their underwater cameras. A century ago, only a skilled on-site artist stood any chance of doing a nudibranch aesthetic justice, particularly in relation to its brilliant but ephemeral colours which would dullen after death.
The vibrant paintings below are the work of Kumataro Ito, the chief illustrator aboard the USS Albatross as it undertook the monumental task, for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, of surveying the aquatic resources of the 7,000 islands of the Philippines. The Tokyo-based Ito cuts a somewhat mysterious figure on the expedition. We do know that he was on board the Albatross for a total of about 16 months, in three separate stints, during which he sketched and produced final paintings of about seventy nudibranchs, and over a hundred fishes. In 1912, following an invitation from the director of the Philippines expedition, Ito lived in Washington DC for up to a year, where he illustrated fish from North America and the deep seas of the Phillippines. Before his involvement with the Albatross, he had established his reputation as an illustrator of sea life with the publication, in Tokyo, of Fishes of Japan (1903–7). Though he was properly attributed in that book, he was very seldom so in those that followed the Philippines expedition.
The voyage ran from 1907 to 1910 and contributed greatly to scientific knowledge of the archipelago. Through various collection methods, from handlines to dynamite, an astonishing 490,000 specimens were delivered to the US National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History). More on the expedition can be found in this Smithsonian article and more on Ito's role in particular in this 1999 article for the Marine Fisheries Review by Victor G. Springer.
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public-domain-review
|
Nov 1, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:08.000559
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/kumataro-ito-s-illustrations-of-nudibranchs-from-the-uss-albatross-philippine-expedition-ca-1908/"
}
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pepys-s-ghost-1899
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Pepys’s Ghost (1899)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Oct 2, 2018
In this strangest of diaries, the author and adventurer Edwin Emerson Jr voices one year in his life through the mouth of Samuel Pepys. London of the 1660s meets New York of 1898. It sounds a bizarre union, and it is, but to give Emerson his dues he does have a fair bit in common with the famous English chronicler. Both are connoisseurs of books, theatre, humour, amour and drinking:
What with good sack, ale, wine, and all manner of drink, we all mighty frolicksome and nothing to stay us, but we must have more of each until all were dancing and leaping merrily with rag, tag, and bobtail, dashing wine everywhere, soyling each the other’s shirte.
This latter-day Pepys visits the theatre to watch and opine on productions of Faust and As You Like It. He converses and cavorts with various literary lights most of whom no longer shine brightly to a twenty-first century reader. Nor in fact did they to contemporary readers, for Emerson deems it necessary to explain many of them in footnotes: “Robert G. Ingersoll, noted lawyer and infidel”; “Hutchinson Hapgood, journalist and miscellaneous writer.” The book is at its most enjoyable when Emerson forgets about high society and imagines instead how old Samuel Pepys would fare in fin-de-siècle NYC:
In comes my cozen James, and he must have it for me to ride on his new-fashioned machine made of two wheels all a-tilt and saddled. Then he sustaining and I bestriding the pesky thing did we venture forth on the high road, I sweating over my whole body and pulling forward now this leg, now that, till he with a loud outcry overturned me where the road was most dirty.
New York is about as noisy as Pepys’ London: full of laughter, swearing, and barking at the annual exhibition of prize dogs in Madison Square Garden. The narrative has all the energy of its bon vivant author, who is never shy of revealing the personal:
My Birthday — To-day am I entering on my thirtieth yeare, and so lay long in the morning, hugging my bed, with high resolves how I must turn all things to a better accounting. My wife up early, and anon bestoweth upon me a rich gowne for to stay at home in, the skirts whereof fall to mine ankles, warm and cozy withal, and a noble cake, wherefore she did demand toll of twenty-nine kisses, one for each of my years, and so we bussed one another right heartily.
In April, Pepys joins the Rough Riders cavalry unit to play his part in the Spanish-American War. There he meets his commander and a future president: “‘Ha,’ quoth Colonell Roosevelt gritting his teeth. ‘Thou here. What can I do for thee?’ Then did I tell him how I was still bent on following his standard, whereat he did show his teeth and laugh.”
After the conflict, in which Emerson has also operated as a secret agent for the US Military Information Bureau, he becomes a soldier of fortune in Panama and South America, though that is not covered in Pepys's Ghost. Nor is the fact that some decades later, when in his sixties, Emerson would become a champion of National Socialism in America. An ignominious phase in a clearly extraordinary life.
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public-domain-review
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Oct 2, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:08.469100
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/pepys-s-ghost-1899/"
}
|
nineteenth-century-textspeak
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Nineteenth-Century Textspeak
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Nov 13, 2018
Long words can be mellifluous, pulchritudinous, even pericombobulating things to behold. But sumtimes we jst nd 2 get 2 da pt. The very earliest writing, by the Sumerians circa 3000 BCE, was in pictographs. These representations of discrete ideas in small pictures, these proto-emojis, continued life in the early modern era, in places like Le Petit Livre d’Amour where we see “cœur” replaced by a ❤️. But from the ancient Greeks onwards, rather than draw pictures, writers striving for concision in alphabetic languages have usually preferred to omit non-crucial letters. Abbreviation of this kind had an unexpected renaissance with “textspeak”, a sublanguage formed in the 160-character-limited SMS (short message service). On early mobile phones you had to type each message on awkward little keys designating up to four letters. These spatial constraints, along with the simple desire to communicate quickly, gave rise to some wonderful abbreviations and acronyms — even if some take the receiver more time in the decoding than save the sender in the composing (e.g. “CURLO: See you around like a donut”).
Two nineteenth-century precursors to textspeak, both hotbeds of radical concision, were the telegram and shorthand. Shorthand had been around since the ancients but the famously innovative Victorians devised a host of new systems. Isaac Pitman, the creator of Stenographic Soundhand, opined that when people correspond by shorthand, “friendships grow six times as fast as under the withering blighting influence of the moon of longhand.” Though Dickens joked in David Copperfield that to acquire "a perfect and entire command of the mystery of shorthand writing and reading was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages". As for telegrams, companies used to charge by the word, so correspondents would leave out unnecessary ones as well as punctuation, to produce messages with a distinct clipped style. And when telegraph operators communicated directly to each other, they would abbreviate words too.
It is this “telegramese” that provides the context for the comic love poem we've featured above. “Essay to Miss Catharine Jay” appears in C.C. Bombaugh’s excellent Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta (first published 1867). Its elliptical style – “I wrote 2 U B 4” (line 6) – bears an uncanny resemblance to the textspeak that would flower 150 years later. The bathos of the following four lines is particularly wonderful, their descent from sophisticated abbreviation work at the end of the first and third lines into something pretty teenaged at the end of the second and fourth:
He says he loves U 2 X S,U R virtuous and Y'sIn X L N C U X LAll others in his i's.
Though a fine example, Bombaugh’s poem is not the first of its kind. It is based on a number of similar poems that appeared in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the nineteenth-century Atlantic. The following example was published in an 1828 issue of The New Monthly Magazine.
And here, in a subsequent issue in the same year, a riposte (an annotated version of which you can see at this great article on Visual Thesaurus).
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public-domain-review
|
Nov 13, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:08.936703
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/nineteenth-century-textspeak/"
}
|
john-milton-s-frontispiece-prank
|
John Milton’s Frontispiece Prank
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Oct 9, 2018
When John Milton’s publisher insisted that he include a portrait in his first collection of poetry — Poems of Mr. John Milton (1645) — he called on the services of the prolific engraver William Marshall. Milton was thirty-seven and had that year begun losing his sight. He would however not be blind for another seven years and could see well enough that the resulting frontispiece was appalling. Comparison with other Milton portraits suggests that Marshall supplied the poet and polemicist with an overly large nose, extra greasy hair and puckered lips. Milton got his own back with an erudite joke. Underneath the frontispiece he had Marshall painstakingly engrave a scathing appraisal of it in a language he clearly could not understand, Greek:
Looking at the form of the original, you could say, perhaps, that this likeness had been drawn by a rank beginner; but, my friends, since you do not recognize what is pictured here, have a chuckle at a caricature by a good-for-nothing artist.
Although Marshall did not know Greek, he likely could make at least some sense of Latin, which makes another aspect of the portrait surprising. Surrounding its oval border is a Latin description, “John Milton, Englishman pictured at age twenty-one.” Yet the face peering out looks much nearer forty than twenty. Was Marshall too inept or perhaps rushed — working as he was during the Civil War when engravers were in short supply — to imbue his subject with youth? Or was was he perhaps simply having a laugh at the expense of a poet past his physical prime? To round off the lamentable frontispiece, the four muses in its corners all look like they’d very much rather be somewhere else.
When Milton brought out an updated version of his Poems in 1673, he saw fit to remove the frontispiece entirely, although not his literary insult. Appearing in the main body of the book, still in the original Greek but now under the title “In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem” (On the Engraver of his Portrait), his barb at Marshall has been elevated to the status of a poem. In another amusing twist to the tale, in Jacob Tonson’s 1713 edition of the Poems, Marshall’s frontispiece was copied by an engraver named M. Vandergucht, who saw fit to replace Marshall’s signature with his own and so thus inadvertently direct the insult to himself.
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public-domain-review
|
Oct 9, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:09.426560
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-milton-s-frontispiece-prank/"
}
|
polychrome-woodblocks-of-ito-jakuchu-birds
|
Polychrome Woodblocks of Itō Jakuchū Birds
Nov 27, 2018
These beautiful polychrome woodblock prints are Meiji era copies (ca. 1900) of original designs (ca. 1771) by Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800), a Japanese painter of the mid-Edo period notable for his striking modern aesthetic. Born in Kyoto, Jakuchū was strongly influenced by Zen Buddhist ideals throughout his life and his name is taken from the Tao Te Ching and means "like the void". He was considered a koji (a lay brother) and he named his studio Shin'en-kan, which translates as "Villa of the Detached Heart [or Mind])", a phrase included in a poem by the ancient Chinese poet Tao Qian.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 27, 2018
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:09.904474
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/polychrome-woodblocks-of-ito-jakuchu-birds/"
}
|
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hamonshu-a-japanese-book-of-wave-and-ripple-designs-1903
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Hamonshu: A Japanese Book of Wave and Ripple Designs (1903)
Text by Adam Green
Sep 16, 2018
The three volumes above bring together a wonderful selection of wave and ripple designs produced by the Japanese artist Mori Yuzan, about whom not a lot is known, apart from that he hailed from Kyoto, worked in the Nihonga style, and died in 1917. The works would have acted as a kind of go-to guide for Japanese craftsmen looking to adorn their wares with wave and ripple patterns. The designs would have found their way onto swords (both blades and handles) and associated paraphernalia (known as "sword furniture"), as well as lacquerware, Netsuke, religious objects, and a host of other items. Peruse the pages above and also see some of our favourites below, including the excellent triple-page composite image (from volume 3) featured near the end.
[NOTE: This post is an expanded and updated version of a previous post which only featured Volume 3 and incorrectly labelled it as Ha Bun Shu, a later post-humous collection of Mori Yuzan's work -- that URL now redirects to this new post. Thank you to all our wonderful community who pointed out this error which was inherited from an incorrect Internet Archive description.]
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public-domain-review
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Sep 16, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:10.416216
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hamonshu-a-japanese-book-of-wave-and-ripple-designs-1903/"
}
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cosmography-manuscript-12th-century
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Cosmography Manuscript (12th Century)
Jul 25, 2018
This wonderful series of medieval cosmographic diagrams and schemas are sourced from a late 12th-century manuscript created in England. Coming to only nine folios, the manuscript is essentially a scientific textbook for monks, bringing together cosmographical knowledge from a range of early Christian writers such as Bede and Isodere, who themselves based their ideas on such classical sources as Pliny the Elder, though adapting them for their new Christian context. As for the intriguing diagrams themselves, The Walters Art Museum, which holds the manuscript and offers up excellent commentary on its contents, provides the following description:
The twenty complex diagrams that accompany the texts in this pamphlet help illustrate [the ideas], and include visualizations of the heavens and earth, seasons, winds, tides, and the zodiac, as well as demonstrations of how these things relate to man. Most of the diagrams are rotae, or wheel-shaped schemata, favored throughout the Middle Ages for the presentation of scientific and cosmological ideas because they organized complex information in a clear, orderly fashion, making this material easier to apprehend, learn, and remember. Moreover, the circle, considered the most perfect shape and a symbol of God, was seen as conveying the cyclical nature of time and the Creation as well as the logic, order, and harmony of the created universe.
A couple of the diagrams feature the so-called "T-O map", which Walters describes as "a conceptual diagram intended to show the relative positions of the three continents".
The T, the Mediterranean Sea, separates Asia, Europe, and Africa, while the O is the surrounding ocean. Although the origins of the T-O map lie in the literature of classical antiquity, some of the earliest surviving pictorial examples occur in early medieval manuscripts of the works of Isidore of Seville.
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public-domain-review
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Jul 25, 2018
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:10.859965
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cosmography-manuscript-12th-century/"
}
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the-dinosaur-and-the-missing-link-a-prehistoric-tragedy-1917
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The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1917)
Text by Adam Green
Sep 25, 2018
This is the first film by stop-motion animation pioneer Willis O'Brien. From the age of just 11, O'Brien worked a huge variety of jobs including cattle rancher, farmhand, factory worker, fur trapper, cowboy, bartender, rodeo man, and guide to palaeontologists in Crater Lake. Spending his spare hours sculpting and illustrating he soon became employed as architect's draftsman and then as cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily News. After a period working the railways he returned to more creative endeavours, becoming a marble sculptor and assistant to the head architect of the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair, where some of his work was displayed. During this time he began to make little models. Perhaps inspired by his time at Crater Lake, amongst his creations was a dinosaur and caveman and he soon began to animate using the stop-motion technique. In 1915, after a San Fransico exhibitor saw his test sequences, O'Brien got his first film commission to make The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy for a budget of $5000.
Thomas Edison saw the film and was impressed. O'Brien was promptly hired by the Edison Company to animate a series of short films with a prehistoric theme, including R.F.D. 10,000 B.C. and Prehistoric Poultry (both 1917). The dinosaur theme continued when he gained a commission from Herbert M. Dawley to write, direct, co-star and produce the effects for dinosaur film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918), though their relationship turned sour and Dawley made sure O'Brien received little financial reimbursement from this success. The film however did help to secure his position on Harry O. Hoyt's The Lost World, a 1925 film based on the novel by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. Eight years later he would do sop-motion animation for best known film, King Kong (1933).
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public-domain-review
|
Sep 25, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:11.368627
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-dinosaur-and-the-missing-link-a-prehistoric-tragedy-1917/"
}
|
east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-illustrated-by-kay-nielsen-1922-edition
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East of the Sun and West of the Moon, illustrated by Kay Nielsen (1922 edition)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Nov 6, 2018
There was an appetite in the early twentieth century for luxurious collections of children’s stories, often bound in gold-toothed vellum, to be given as gifts. Brilliant artists of the day including Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac were commissioned to illustrate them. Perhaps one of the finest creations to emerge from this golden age of illustration was an edition of East of the Sun and West of the Moon which boasted twenty-five colour plates and many more monochrome images by Kay Nielsen, a young Danish artist who had studied in Paris before moving to England in 1911. The compendium consists of fifteen fairy tales gathered by the Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe on their journeys across mid nineteenth-century Norway. Translated into English by George Webbe Dasent (1817–1896), the stories — populated by witches, trolls, ogres, sly foxes, mysterious bears, beautiful princesses and shy country lads turned heroes — were praised by Jacob Grimm himself for having a freshness and a fullness that “surpasses nearly all others”.
The Great War interrupted Nielsen’s career and he never quite reached the same heights as an illustrator afterwards. But his work did embellish some further collections of stories, notably by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. In his fifties he moved to Hollywood to work for Walt Disney and some of his illustrations graced the "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria" sequences of Fantasia (1940). He was let go by Disney in 1941 and spent the final sixteen years of his life in poverty.
Originally printed in London in 1914 Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon saw a number of reprints over the years and decades, most recently in 2015 when Taschen published a glorious edition with three accompanying essays (illustrated with dozens of rare artworks by Nielsen), exploring the history of Norwegian folktales and Nielsen's life and work.
Below we've picked out some favourites from the book's stunning series of colour plates, mainly sourced from the Internet Archive's 1922 New York version featured above but also some from Wikimedia Commons.
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public-domain-review
|
Nov 6, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:11.805811
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-illustrated-by-kay-nielsen-1922-edition/"
}
|
dream-of-a-rarebit-fiend-1906
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Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906)
Text by Adam Green
Oct 17, 2018
A short, silent film starring John P. Brawn as the titular fiend, who having gorged himself on Welsh Rarebit — melted cheese on toast — stumbles to bed via a rather hallucinatory encounter with a lamp post and falls into a troubled sleep. Inaugurated by a trio of pickaxe-wielding demons, his subsequent cheese-fuelled dream involves an inelegant flight through his window and over an urban nightscape, ending skewered by his pyjamas on a weather vane. The film features some pioneering special effects including a fully spinning sky and the aforementioned demons.
The sequence is based on a comic strip by Winsor McCay, alias “Silas”. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was McCay's longest running comic, totalling over 300 episodes more than his better known Little Nemo. It begun with a seven year stint in the New York Herald, running from 1904 to 1911, and then from 1911 to 1913 appeared in various other papers under different titles, before undergoing a brief revival in the 1920s under the title Rarebit Reveries. As in the 1906 screen version, each episode involves an instance of indulgence in some food or other (usually Welsh Rarebit) followed by an often unsettling trip through a turbulent dreamscape. The darkish nature of these postprandial wanderings through the human psyche lie in stark contrast to the happier dream world excursions presented in the all-colour Little Nemo begun a year after Dream of a Rarebit Fiend launched.
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public-domain-review
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Oct 17, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:12.352393
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dream-of-a-rarebit-fiend-1906/"
}
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the-laughing-song-1904
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The Laughing Song (1904)
Jul 17, 2018
In this novelty recording by the Norwegian actor Henry Klauser, a mournful refrain gradually gives way to laughter. According to The Incredible Music Machine (1982), the record found a perhaps unlikely fan in the form of the fifth Qajar king of Persia, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar.
The Shah became a great fan of the gramophone. Later that year, he asked [Gramophone] Company representative E.W. Emmerson to bring some of the latest records to the Palace. One of them was the famous "Laughing Song" by Henry Klauser, and Emmerson reported that the Shah laughed out loud when it was played. He added: "The contortions on the faces of his people, who are not supposed to laugh in his presence, baffled description."
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public-domain-review
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Jul 17, 2018
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:12.852905
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-laughing-song-1904/"
}
|
|
images-from-william-saville-kent-s-the-great-barrier-reef-of-australia-1893
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Images from William Saville-Kent’s The Great Barrier Reef of Australia (1893)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Sep 20, 2018
While naming and arranging corals in the Natural History Department of the British Museum, William Saville-Kent daydreamed of seeing the beautiful grey organisms in front of him “in their native seas and wonderful living tints.” Years later he would realise his dream at the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. There he conceived of a book that would be the first to extensively depict a coral reef in photographs — a selection of which are embedded at the bottom of this post.
Saville-Kent had grown frustrated by lack of promotion at the museum (where he worked under Richard Owen) and left in 1873 to become a resident naturalist at aquariums first in Brighton, then Manchester, and finally London. In 1884 he voyaged to the other side of the world and spent the next twenty years laying the foundations for fisheries development in Australia. He was particularly spellbound by the corals, polyps and other lifeforms on the Queensland coast. He hoped his book The Great Barrier Reef of Australia (1893) would increase public awareness of the reef and its origins, as well as encourage “development of its marvellous resources” — which was ominous when you consider its highly precarious predicament today.
The forty-eight photographs in the book were captured by Saville-Kent and then reproduced by the London Stereoscopic Company. The book's biggest aesthetic delight, however, is perhaps reserved for the end. Here the reader would find sixteen beautiful colour lithographs created by a Mr Riddle and Mr Couchman from Saville-Kent’s original watercolour sketches. Though perhaps not the most accurate of depictions, something in the naive and almost cartoon-like representation seems to emphasise the vibrancy and life of the reef.
The achievements of Saville-Kent never entirely shook a scandal which had followed him since he was fifteen. In 1860, his infant half-brother, Savill, was found murdered. His 16-year-old sister Constance was arrested but released without trial — public opinion distrusted the case of a working-class detective against a lady of breeding. Five years later, Constance confessed to the murder (though the Australian Dictionary of Biography calls it a "doubtful confession") . Wilkie Collins put details of the case in The Moonstone (1868), the founding text of English detective fiction. As for William, there were suspicions that he had been an accomplice to his sister though he was never charged. His sister Constance escaped the gallows and died in 1944, at the age of one hundred, in Australia.
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public-domain-review
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Sep 20, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:13.314405
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/images-from-william-saville-kent-s-the-great-barrier-reef-of-australia-1893/"
}
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the-astrologer-of-the-nineteenth-century-1825
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The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century (1825)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Oct 23, 2018
Before we're even passed the title page of this manual on astrology and the occult, we encounter an instance of the dark arts at work — this second edition has been cunningly labelled the “seventh” to make it look like a runaway success. Its mysterious author “Raphael” cobbled the book together out of articles from The Straggling Astrologer, a pioneering journal of astrology which the previous year he had edited into an early grave. (The man behind the pen name was the Bristol-born writer Robert Cross Smith. He had probably chosen the pseudonym in reference to the archangel Raphael who is associated with Mercury, messenger of the Gods.)
Although not everything Raphael touched turned to publishing gold, he was a key figure in the nineteenth-century revival of astrology — a discipline which having lost its scientific credibility by 1700 had been in seemingly terminal decline. From 1826 to his death in 1832, Raphael edited a successful almanac, The Prophetic Messenger, which included the ephemeris — a chart of daily planetary positions. When issued as a separate volume, Raphael's Ephemeris became the standard text for British and American astrologers constructing horoscopes.
The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century covers, in quite dramatic prose, a multitude of occult topics in ten chapters, or “circles”:
Circle 1 is on necromancy (communicating with the dead)
Circle 2 describes several historical disasters and the omens that foretold them
Circle 3 concerns raising spirits from the dead with magic charms and incantations
Circle 4 is a how-to guide to astrology
Circle 5 identifies some brilliant prophecies that have come true
Circle 6 astrologically explains the lives of several illustrious people
Circle 7 is about geomancy (telling the future from patterns of dots)
Circle 8 offers various charms and talismans (including one to fend off reptiles)
Circle 9 recounts stories of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena
Circle 10 houses material that doesn’t fit neatly in the other circles, including reflections on the Philosopher’s Stone and a method for making trees more fruitful: “The seeds of roses, with mustard-seed, and the foot of a weasel, tied together in something, and hung among the boughs or branches of a tree which bears but little fruit, will remedy the defect, and render the tree amazingly fruitful.”
In his introduction, Raphael contends that he believes very firmly in astrology, fairly firmly in geomancy, and not much in magic rites, charms, and incantations. (He only includes these last to satisfy “Those who delight in the terrific, and the horribly sublime.”) The book makes a range of arguments for the veracity of astrology, the most ingenious being that “the greatest rulers, and statesmen, and chiefs, of the present age” are part of a conspiracy. They all publically call astrology “incompatible with sense and reason, and everything else that is esteemed good” because they want to retain exclusive access to it — “a science alone capable of instructing them when to bring forward their measures with the most certain prospect of success…”
The book warns of dire consequences for those who would ignore celestial omens. Thus we learn that the balloonist Thomas Harris would not have fallen to his death in 1824 if he had only noticed “the planet Jupiter coming into the point of the Dragon’s tail in the ominous sign Cancer but a few hours preceding the ascent.” If this kind of argument fails to convince readers, especially those who have recently experienced misfortune, then it may offend them instead. A century and a half later, in his book Cosmos (1980), Carl Sagan would neatly voice his frustration at the field of enquiry Raphael had helped to revive:
In contemporary Western society, buying a magazine on astrology – at a newsstand, say – is easy; it is much harder to find one on astronomy. Virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology; there are hardly any that have even a weekly column on astronomy. There are ten times more astrologers in the United States than astronomers. At parties, when I meet people who do not know I am a scientist, I am sometimes asked, ‘Are you a Gemini?’ (chances of success, one in twelve) or ‘What sign are you?’ Much more rarely am I asked, ‘Have you heard that gold is made in supernova explosions?...’
Whatever your feelings on the beliefs at the heart of Raphael's book, we hope one thing everyone can agree on is the brilliance of the imagery it boasts. We've picked out some of our favourites and featured them below.
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public-domain-review
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Oct 23, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:13.767114
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-astrologer-of-the-nineteenth-century-1825/"
}
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bon-mots-of-the-eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century-1897
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Bon-Mots of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (1897)
Jul 19, 2018
Both published in 1897, Bon-Mots of the Eighteenth Century and Bon-Mots of the Nineteenth Century, pretty much deliver what they promise — that is, a compilation of some of the best conversational witticisms of the two centuries. Examples from many famous and expected names adorn its pages — including Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, and Lord Byron — but we are also introduced to more obscure though no less prolific sources, such as the actor Charles Bannister and the Irish politician John Philpot Curran. Although many of the bon-mots might not stand the test of time — so often firmly rooted in the language or the culture of the time as they are — some don't fair too badly today. Also don't miss the two introductions which each include entertaining examples of how various writers have defined "wit" (in Bon-Mots of the Eighteenth Century) and "humour" (in Bon-Mots of the Nineteenth Century). Look out also for the fun little "grotesques" that litter the pages of both volumes, by English artist Alice B. Woodward.
Bon-Mots of the Nineteenth Century, by Walter Jerrold; 1897; London : J. M. Dent.
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public-domain-review
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Jul 19, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:14.260934
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/bon-mots-of-the-eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century-1897/"
}
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albert-racinet-s-l-ornement-polychrome-1869-73
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Albert Racinet’s L’Ornement Polychrome (1869–73)
Jul 5, 2018
Albert-Charles-Auguste Racinet (1825–1893), himself an accomplished artist, is best known today for publishing two major pictorial works on the history of design — Le costume historique and L'Ornement polychrome — while engraver and artistic director at the Parisian publisher Firmin Didot et Cie. Published in ten instalments between 1869 and 1873, the first iteration of L'Ornement polychrome (Colour ornament) is a visual record in 100 plates of the decorative arts from antiquity to the eighteenth century. The work was such a huge success that in 1885–7 Racinet brought out a second series, this time of 120 plates, and updated to include designs of the nineteenth century as well. The imagery presented in both series is drawn from a wide array of various mediums, including woodwork, metalwork, architecture, textiles, painting, and pottery, and from cultures all over the world.
Although based on past masterpieces of design, the fantastic reproductions in L'Ornement polychrome, carried out by a number of skilled commercial artists of the day, can be considered works of art in their own right. Indeed, for Racinet, the purpose of such a compilation of past design excellence was not only to celebrate the masters of the past but also to inspire an improvement of decorative arts in his own day and age.
The images featured here come from an excellent set of scans by RawPixel from their own 1888 edition of the first series. You can also leaf through the work in book form (again the first series) over at the New York Public Library.
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public-domain-review
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Jul 5, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:14.563754
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/albert-racinet-s-l-ornement-polychrome-1869-73/"
}
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early-experiments-with-x-rays-1896
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Early Experiments with X-Rays (1896)
Text by Adam Green
Oct 16, 2018
These exquisite photogravures are from one of the first series of X-rays ever produced, by Josef Maria Eder (1855–1944), a director of an institute for graphic processes, and Eduard Valenta (1857–1937), a photochemist, both from Austria. The portfolio, simply titled Versuche über Photographie mittelst der Röntgen'schen Strahlen (Experiments in Photography by means of X-Rays), contains a total of fifteen images: a mixture of positives and negatives, including, in addition to the skeletal forms of animals and human limbs, X-rays of carved cameos and an assortment of various materials such as metal, wood, glass, and meat. If the images are striking today they must have been doubly so when first published, only a few weeks after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen made his discovery of X-rays public with his groundbreaking paper "On a New Kind of Ray". The impact of the invention was revolutionary, not just medically but also aesthetically. As The Met comments: “The careful compositions and shocking appearance of these ‘Experiments in Photography’ link them to the previous century’s tradition of natural-history illustration and point toward the experiments of New Vision photographers in the 1910s and 1920s.”
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public-domain-review
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Oct 16, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:15.018865
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/early-experiments-with-x-rays-1896/"
}
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the-triumphal-arch-of-emperor-maximilian-i-1515
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The Triumphal Arch of Emperor Maximilian I (1515)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Sep 6, 2018
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian commissioned this extraordinary, grandiose triumphal arch in around 1515 to glorify himself and his ancestors. Never a blueprint for a real arch, it was designed to decorate the walls of town halls and ducal palaces throughout the Empire. It was modelled on the arches of the emperors of ancient Rome and made by pressing a whopping 195 woodcuts onto 36 sheets of paper, to form a huge 3.57 by 2.95 metre composite print. Expressing the grandeur, nobility and (even if it does look a little top heavy) stability of the House of Hapsburg, it must be one of the most ornate propaganda posters in print history. The idea was to induce obedience in its central European audiences. As Neil MacGregor put it in Germany (2014), "it suggested (very economically) that at any moment the Emperor himself might arrive in triumph." For Maximilian, tessellated paper had several advantages to tessellated stone. It gave the artists involved access to an imaginative realm free of gravitational concerns. It was also cheaper and easier to disseminate — the first edition of the print ran to seven hundred copies. Most of its woodcuts were designed by Albrecht Dürer, from whom Maximilian commissioned two other gigantic self-glorifying composite prints, including a Triumphal Procession 54 metres in length. These prints are some of the earliest and finest examples of imperial propaganda, or “paper grandeur” as the art historian Hyatt Mayor has dubbed it.
The Triumphal Arch is both allegorical and specific. It features three gates devoted to (from left to right) Praise, Honour, and Nobility. Above the central gate of Honour a family tree reaches back as far as the mythical Francia, Sicambria and Troia. Atop the gates of Praise and Nobility are depictions of key events from Maximilian’s reign. These are flanked by a column of his ancestors on the right and busts of other emperors and kings on the left. The outermost towers on both sides depict Maximilian’s private life. It is clear from the different styles on show that Dürer subcontracted to his pupils the execution of most of the historical scenes, the family tree in the centre, and the left half of the ornamental framework.
The seven hundred prints of the first edition were intended for hand colouring but very few coloured examples survive. The British Museum has published a great scan of their monochrome copy (but as it is not openly licensed we've not featured it in this post). The image at the top of this post is a scan of a complete copy of a later 1799 edition belonging to The National Gallery of Art. Higher res scans of details of the first edition have been made available by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we've featured a selection of those below.
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public-domain-review
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Sep 6, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:15.516290
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-triumphal-arch-of-emperor-maximilian-i-1515/"
}
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ye-butcher-ye-baker-ye-candlestick-maker-1908
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Ye Butcher, Ye Baker, Ye Candlestick-Maker (1908)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Sep 19, 2018
Although at first glance this little book could be mistaken for an eighteenth-century English chapbook, it was in fact published in New York in 1908 as a parody. It contains ballad-like poems on a range of olde professions, each one taking an amusing turn in its final few lines to consider the trade in the modern world — and in the process often taking a swipe at a whole host of contemporary "ills", including increased regulations, trade unions, and fake news in the media. Here's an example from "Ye Pirate" which lands close to our territory at the Public Domain Review:
“Ye pirate now stays safe ashore,
And authors rate him when
He robs ye good ship ‘Copyright'
Of thoughts of brighter men.”
Robert Seaver illustrated each poem with woodcuts, also in chapbook-style, and could possibly have conceived of the book because of the success of The Diverting History of John Gilpin which he had illustrated two years previously.
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public-domain-review
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Sep 19, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:16.000705
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ye-butcher-ye-baker-ye-candlestick-maker-1908/"
}
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landscapes-of-the-western-front-1914-1918
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Landscapes of the Western Front, 1914–1918
Text by Adam Green
Nov 8, 2018
One hundred years ago this year, after four years of unimaginable carnage, the first world war finally came to an end. In its wake the conflict left tens of millions dead, many more injured, and vast swathes of land decimated by an estimated 1.5 billion shells on the Western Front alone. The devastation was unprecedented and, thanks to advances in photography, so was its documentation. In addition to the amateur snaps captured by soldiers (despite most militaries forbidding it), and photographs taken for journalistic purposes, photography played a vital military role, specifically in the areas of reconnaissance both aerial and terrestrial. It is a collection of photographs belonging to the latter camp that we've chosen to focus on in this post. They were found in a collection housed at the Imperial War Museum titled "British Official Panoramas Of The Western Front 1914–1918" which contains thousands of battlefield panoramas, each made by piecing together anything from three to thirty regular sized photographs. To capture these photographs army photographers would have to have spent long periods with their head above the parapet - a view so dangerous it was only normally witnessed via the medium of a trench periscope or mirror. Once developed in mobile darkrooms and pieced together, the resulting panoramas could be studied and annotated with information about enemy positions and key locations relating to future operations.
Today, a century after their strategic function has passed, the photographs offer an unusual and haunting portrait of the front. Indeed, they carry an emotive quality seemingly enhanced by their utilitarian purpose. These are not images chosen to sell newspapers, for propaganda, framed and shot to pull heartstrings or elicit outrage. They rather come to us direct, raw, from the stark and naked reality of a war in deadly flow. Though despite this immediacy they seem oddly quiet, empty, mostly entirely devoid of human forms — the only corpse we can see being the land itself, battered, contaminated, whole forests destroyed. It is an emptiness which seems to speak at once of the void the war left in so many families back home, and of an odd sense of peace the other side of the shells — a peace which reigned once the armistice was signed, even if it would only last another couple of decades.
For more on the topic we recommend checking out The Battlefields of the First World War: The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front (2005) by Peter Barton and a foreword by Richard Holmes. It includes many of the panoramas in the Imperial War Museum's collection along with "poignant personal photographs and the recollections of the soldiers caught in action in the battles shown". Also related is Simon Armitage's book Still (2016), a sequence of sixteen poems written in response to twenty-six panoramic photographs of Somme battlefields picked from the Imperial War Museum archives.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 8, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:16.496935
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/landscapes-of-the-western-front-1914-1918/"
}
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the-tragedy-of-the-seas-1841
|
The Tragedy of the Seas (1841)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Sep 11, 2018
What can convey a more exalted idea of human daring and fortitude, than the boldness with which man rushes forth to encounter the storms and waves of those two mighty elements, the air and ocean? What can speak louder in praise of human ingenuity, than the wonderful art by which he is enabled to boldly steer from the land until it fades in the horizon, and nothing is to be seen but the heavenly concave above and a watery waste around him ?
So asks Charles Ellms in the preface to The Tragedy of the Seas, a book which, as its title suggests, is dedicated to the times when such waterborne adventures go wrong — a colourful compendium of thirty-seven nautical catastrophes that took place in bodies of water around the world between 1803 and 1840. We read of ships wrecked on coral reefs, capsized in hurricanes, and reduced to cinders after lightning strikes. The celebrated French navigator De Blosseville sails on a voyage of discovery to the Arctic Ocean never to return. A steamer violently explodes on the Ohio River killing dozens. The most fatal involves 116 passengers succumbing to hunger and cold after the barque Mexico was stranded off Long Island in January 1837. There is enough pulsating action, compelling characterisation, and technical information in the book’s 432 pages to keep your average deckhand entertained for an entire Atlantic crossing.
The writer of the book, Charles Ellms, was a Boston stationer and author of three other popular adventure books including The Pirates Own Book (1837) and Robinson Crusoe’s Own Book (1842). In his introduction to The Tragedy of the Seas Ellms declares that “The Narratives that follow are plain, true, and unvarnished; and if the hand that guided the rudder in the hour of misfortune was prevented, by the physical elements, from steering a correct course, nothing has prevented truth, that moral magnet of the mind, from invariably guiding the survivor in his narration.” Some modern readers are less certain than Ellms about his magnetic relationship to truth. Boyd Childress, writing for Williams College, Connecticut, believes he was never shy of embellishment: “It is difficult to determine where accuracy ends and Ellms begins.”
Ellms maximises the drama in part by playing to nineteenth-century stereotypes of savagely violent indigenous peoples. We learn of two survivors of a whale ship wrecked off the Palau Islands being captured and “subjected to unheard-of Sufferings among the barbarous Inhabitants”. Another shipwreck off the coast of East Florida leads to the “MASSACRE OF THE OFFICERS AND PART OF THE CREW by the Seminole Indians.” There is more to the book however than fire and fury, blood and guts. The open ocean is a great stage for displays of fortitude and ingenuity too. An Englishman called James Brock looks certain to die when his yawl capsizes off Yarmouth but manages to swim fourteen bitterly cold miles to safety. The Frigate Pique is extricated by her sailors from a “PERILOUS SITUATION ON THE ROCKS OF LABRADOR, where she lost her Keel; and the Passage across the Atlantic, during which SHE LOST HER RUDDER, AND WAS STEERED FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES WITHOUT ANY.” We learn of a posse of sailors who, after three days trapped in their cramped sleeping quarters in the mid-Atlantic, set themselves free by cutting through the deck itself. Perhaps most extraordinary is the tale of a stray Japanese vessel carried diagonally across the immensity of the Pacific Ocean until by chance it reached the Sandwich Island 11,000 miles and eleven and a half months later. “For the last three months,” Ellms relates “they had been without water: they had a large supply of rice, it being the principal part of the cargo; and they allayed their thirst by washing their mouths and soaking their bodies in salt water.”
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public-domain-review
|
Sep 11, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:16.967707
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-tragedy-of-the-seas-1841/"
}
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spells-against-the-evil-spirits-of-babylonia-1903
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Spells Against the Evil Spirits of Babylonia (1903)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Oct 31, 2018
Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath no couch… or one that lieth dead in the desert… or a ghost unburied… or a hag-demon, or a ghoul, or a robber-sprite, or a weeping woman that hath died with a babe at the breast… Whatever thou be until thou art removed, until thou departest from the body of the man, thou shalt have no water to drink. Thou shalt not stretch forth thy hand… Into the house enter thou not. Through the fence break thou not...
So begins an incantation that started life on the lips of a Sumerian sorcerer six or seven millennia ago, before being penned into a clay tablet in the seventh century BC by an Assyrian scholar and then placed in the great library of his king, Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh. When the Babylonians sacked Nineveh in 612 BC, they consigned the library and its 30,000 tablets to the dust. In the 1840s it was excavated and the tablet was taken to the British Museum, where the scholar Reginald Campbell Thompson translated it, and forty-three similar incantations, into the first volume of The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia: Being Babylonian and Assyrian Incantations Against the Demons, Ghouls, Vampires, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, and Kindred Evil Spirits, Which Attack Mankind (1903).
To live in ancient Mesopotamia, the book suggests, was to contend with a frightening variety of supernatural adversaries. From the heavens, godlike devils descended to “ride on noxious winds, spreading storms and pestilence”. From the underworld, ravenous Ekimmu rose up, desperately dissatisfied with their diet of dust, mud, and insufficient libations from family members. They would approach a hapless traveller in a haunted place, fasten upon them and torment them until an exorcising priest intervened. The Utukku, also risen from the underworld, would lie in wait in the desert, mountains or graveyards, inflicting evil with a mere glance. The half demon, half human Alu were equally terrifying. Usually lacking mouth, limbs, or ears they hid away in dark corners, haunting ruins and deserted buildings and “slinking through the streets at night like pariah dogs”, before at any moment emerging to envelop you like a cloak. The Alu were also said, in a rather frightening embodiment of insomnia, to stand over the bed of a victim and threaten to pounce if they dared close their eyes, stealing away all hope of sleep.
The bulk of the book, after Thompson's lengthy but informative introduction, is composed of side-by-side transliterations of the "evil spirit" tablets and translations into English. Perfect for those whose cuneiform is a little rusty but wish to get involved in some warding away of evil spirits. Below we've featured some embeds of the book which open on the right pages so you can jump in directly to get a taste of the book's various spells.
Although the second volume of Thompson’s book describes some additional supernatural beings and protective incantations, its main focus is on purification rituals and defence against disease and illness — including a handy incantation against headaches. Both volumes have recently been republished as part of the Cambridge University Press Library Collection. If Assyria gets you going, a major new exhibition opens next month at the British Museum entitled “I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria” (8 November 2018 – 24 February 2019).
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public-domain-review
|
Oct 31, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:17.286557
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/spells-against-the-evil-spirits-of-babylonia-1903/"
}
|
flatfish-camouflage-experiments-1911
|
Flatfish Camouflage Experiments (1911)
Text by Adam Green
Jul 11, 2018
This great series of photographs comes from a 1911 paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology by American ichthyologist and zoologist Francis Bertody Sumner. The images were captured a year earlier at the Naples Zoological Station in Italy and back home at the U.S. fisheries Laboratory at Woods Hole, in a series of experiments in which Sumner puts a various types of flounder through their paces as regards camouflage ability. Placing them against bold and striking patterns (more than they'd experience in nature), Sumner photographed them at various states of adapting to their new backgrounds — and concluded that the fish with the most favourable adaptive qualities was a small species of flounder named Rhomboidichthys podas. Although the fact that the photographs are in black and white (a limitation of the time) might slightly impinge on their scientific usefulness, it does somewhat enhance their aesthetic qualities, at times lending them an almost pop art air.
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public-domain-review
|
Jul 11, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:17.761322
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/flatfish-camouflage-experiments-1911/"
}
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anecdotes-of-animals-1905
|
Anecdotes of Animals (1905)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Nov 20, 2018
This book — first published in a slightly different format in 1901 — features a hundred real or real-ish tales of ingenious, loyal or otherwise extraordinary animals, each enlivened by a wonderful picture from British illustrator Percy J. Billinghurst.
We meet a role-reversing Russian bear who hugs a boy to its breast to keep him warm each night. An obliging dolphin who ferries a Roman boy across a lake every morning and back in the afternoon. A wise dog who guides a replacement newspaper delivery man along its unwell owner’s complicated round. The famously clever elephants star in eight anecdotes. One squirts bullying cobblers with a trunkful of dirty water. Another sacrifices itself to protect King Porus from Macedonian swordsmen. A third is rapturous with joy when reunited with its master after a dozen years of separation. Other animals are crueller, though still clever, such as a hen who captures and kills up to five mice a day to protect a hayrick, and a wild stork who four months after being attacked by a tame one returns with three friends to administer lethal retribution.
The celebration of the impressive feats of non-human animals has a long history, stretching back at least to Plutarch, who provided the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne with anecdotal material to argue for the superior intelligence of animals in his Apology for Raymond Sebond (1576). The brains of the beasts continue to enthral scientists today, as this excellent Economist essay “Animal Minds” suggests.
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public-domain-review
|
Nov 20, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:18.210781
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/anecdotes-of-animals-1905/"
}
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1970-a-vision-of-the-coming-age-1870
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1970: A Vision of the Coming Age (1870)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Jun 14, 2018
This intriguing (though somewhat saccharine) utopian poem is penned by John Collins, a Quaker from New Jersey who made his living as a lithographer, poet, and teacher. It tells of a dream in which the world is revealed one hundred years hence, the unnamed dreamer — travelling by airship from New Jersey to London, Paris, and Rome — witnessing societies transformed into Quakerly perfection. As with most future visions, 1970 is most of all a commentary on the time in which it was written, in this case 1870. Gone are advertising, cigarettes, booze, dance-halls, trashy novels: “No theatre belched out at midnight a throng / Inflamed with drugged wine and lascivious song.’” Gone is crime and deceit of every kind. Hotels no longer exist because strangers will put you up for free. There are no currencies, except silver and gold of unchanging value, so no inflation to worry about. God has taken the aggression out of lions, and transformed the climate into perpetual spring. Schoolchildren willingly help strangers, until they decide “to school we must haste / No longer the precious, short study-hours to waste.” One rather hopes these children will reappear later in the poem having turned sinister like the Midwich Cuckoos, but it never happens. Loving kindness abounds: “Such a sense of true happiness filled all the air, / It seemed more than the spirit of mortal could bear” (or perhaps the spirit of more cynical modern readers too).
In many ways 1970 can be seen as millenarian prophecy, which sees improving technology as part of God’s plan to redeem humankind. The narrator imagines edifying music broadcast to the masses along telegraph wires, in a cross between a Skype conference call and a YouTube stream: “A dozen performers, each one at his home, / In London, Pekin, Paris, Athens and Rome, / To give in New York, at mass concerts free, / Oratorios by telegraph under the sea.” Another passage foreshadows drone deliveries. A New Jerseyite asks a friend in Cuba to send them special ingredients for a party dessert, and “In half an hour came, propelled through the air, / The Fruits and the sweets packed with exquisite care.” When the narrator flies from England to France he notices a bridge linking the two countries beneath him; such a construction has been seriously considered this year. And you could interpret the vision of book reading in 1970 as a metaphor for the wonderful Internet Archive: “Here a library stood with its wide open door / The clerks and librarian needed no more / As the readers took works from their place on the shelves / And duly returned them uninjured themselves.”
For more historical visions of the future see here.
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public-domain-review
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Jun 14, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:19.234328
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nathaniel-hawthorne-s-tanglewood-tales-illustrated-by-virginia-frances-sterrett-1921
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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales, illustrated by Virginia Frances Sterrett (1921)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Mar 20, 2018
The Wonder-book for Boys and Girls (1851), along with its sequel The Tanglewood Tales (1852), were an attempt by the celebrated novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne — author of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851) — to turn the Greek myths into something entertaining and edifying to young readers. It worked. The Wonder-book sold 4667 copies in its first two months. By comparison Moby Dick, which was published in the same month, sold less than 1800 copies in its first year. (Herman Melville had actually dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne — the intense friendship of the two writers has been brilliantly told by Philip Hoare in Leviathan, or the Whale [2008]).
In his preface to Tanglewood Tales, Hawthorne reveals the reservations he felt about adapting the Greek myths into child-friendly form. Knowing that many of the old legends are “hideous … melancholy … miserable … abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense” he had wondered “How were they to be purified? How was the blessed sunshine to be thrown into them?” The idea of whitewashing the Greek myths may put off some twenty-first-century readers. Thankfully the project was not a complete success. Plenty of darkness survives. So for example in the retelling of Theseus and the Minotaur we learn of Procrustes, a man who ensured his visitors had the right size bed in uncompromising fashion:
In his cavern he had a bed, on which, with great pretense of hospitality, he invited his guests to lie down; but, if they happened to be shorter than the bed, this wicked villain stretched them out by main force; or, if they were too tall, he lopped off their heads or feet, and laughed at what he had done, as an excellent joke.
The 1921 edition we are featuring here is greatly enhanced by its otherworldly illustrations, all of which we’ve placed below. They are the work of Chicago-based artist Virginia Frances Sterrett who was just 20 at the time. The previous year she had blessed Old French Fairy Tales (1920) with more of her graphic magic, which you can see here and also buy as prints in our online shop here. If you are looking to get a copy of the Tanglewood Tales on your bookshelves without breaking the bank then we recommend this 2017 edition from The Planet Books complete with reproductions of Sterrett's beautiful illustrations.
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public-domain-review
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Mar 20, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:19.724849
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{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/nathaniel-hawthorne-s-tanglewood-tales-illustrated-by-virginia-frances-sterrett-1921/"
}
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maps-showing-california-as-an-island
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Maps Showing California as an Island
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
May 15, 2018
If California were a country its economy would be the fifth largest in the world (just ahead of the UK). Yet the tech boom is not the starkest way California has ever stood apart from its neighbours. That would surely be the maps depicting it as an island, entire of itself. Below we have featured our pick of these glorious seventeenth- and eighteenth-century aberrations, from a collection of hundreds held at Stanford.
The intriguing story of how the maps came to be deserves a little mapping itself. In the 1530s Spanish explorers led by Hernán Cortés encountered the strip of land we now know as the Baja Peninsula. They mistook it for an island and called it California. Both the name and the notion of it being an island came straight from the pages of a novel — a very popular Spanish romance, Las Sergas de Esplandián [The Adventures of Esplandián] (1510), which described an imaginary realm ruled by Queen Califia:
Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons. They had beautiful and robust bodies, and were brave and very strong. Their island was the strongest of the World, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores. Their weapons were golden and so were the harnesses of the wild beasts that they were accustomed to taming so that they could be ridden, because there was no other metal in the island than gold.
In 1539, a Spanish expedition led by Francisco de Ulloa discovered that the Baja Peninsula was just that, a peninsula, firmly attached to the mainland. And for the next eighty years published maps reflected this correct view. Then, in 1622, European maps suddenly started showing California adrift, effectively extending the Gulf of California in its northwesterly direction until it meets the Pacific. This island view of California, resembling a floating carrot, was replicated again and again over the next century and a quarter. By 1747, Ferdinand VI of Spain had had enough. He issued a reasonably clear decree, “California is not an Island”. But the royal newsflash travelled slowly. California would appear as an island as late as 1865 on a map made in Japan (see very final image below).
What on earth had happened? How had such a large piece of America been wrenched free? The Spanish clergyman Antonio de la Acensión played a crucial role. Two decades after sailing along the West Coast in 1602–3, Acensión began arguing in letters and books that California was an (enormous) island. It seems he wanted to extend the Gulf of California a great deal further north and so invalidate Sir Francis Drake’s claim of "Nova Albion" for England (as Acensión's version would have had Drake landing on the island of California, rather than the mainland). Acensión's island view was believed by many in Europe. And in the early 1620s maps showing California as an island started appearing in Spain and Holland. The first English one appeared in 1625, next to an influential article about the search for the Northwest Passage. From there the error took flight, deceiving map makers and readers throughout the world for decades.
The fact that a number of explorers knew that California was not an island was not enough to nip the idea in the bud. Yet it would be a shame to think of the idea as simply an error, a cartographical crease which needed ironing out. Even though maps may be presented as accurate, they cannot escape their metaphorical nature. They reflect much more than physical geography. That California was mapped as an island for so long speaks to its separateness. The writer Rebecca Solnit, a student of the Stanford maps, has argued that, “An island is anything surrounded by difference.” The state contains around 2,000 plant species found nowhere else. Its borders comprise dizzying mountains, harsh deserts and immense ocean. It has been home to the Gold Rush, the psychedelic era, the silicon boom. In several ways then, California is an island.
In 2018, nearly 400 years after the Island of California first appeared on a map, tens of thousands of Californians are supporting “Calexit” – the secession of the Golden State from the United States. As far as we know, none has advocated digging a mighty trench along the state borders and flooding it with Pacific moat water. For the foreseeable future at least, California is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If you want to delve deeper into the story, there is an enjoyable chapter on it in Simon Garfield’s On the Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does (2012). If you’d prefer to dive deeper still, we suggest The Island of California: A History of the Myth (1995) by Dora Beale Polk. Finally, if you’re just really into islands that are not actually islands, take a look at the improbable story of Sandy Island, which was only “undiscovered” in 2012.
Below you'll find featured our highlights from the wonderful Glen McLaughlin Collection of California as an Island, a collection of nearly 750 maps obtained by Mr. McLaughlin over nearly 40 years, which have all been digitised and made available under a public domain mark through Stanford University Libraries. The two maps shown above are both from the Library of Congress.
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public-domain-review
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May 15, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:20.221304
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/maps-showing-california-as-an-island/"
}
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swedish-house-gymnastics-1913
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Swedish House-Gymnastics (1913)
Apr 5, 2018
These wonderful photographs, which make such innovative use of multiple exposure, are from a 1913 German book titled Schwedische Haus-Gymnastik nach dem System P.H. Ling's by Theodor Bergquist, Director of the Swedish Gymnastic Institute in the Bavarian spa town of Bad Wörishofen. As the title tells us, this style of "Swedish house-gymnastics" demonstrated by Bergquist (and his mysterious female colleague) is based on a system developed by Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839), a pioneer in the teaching of physical education in Sweden. Inventor of various physical education apparatus including the box horse, wall bars, and beams, Ling is also credited with establishing calisthenics as a distinct discipline and is considered by some as the father of Swedish massage.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 5, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:20.701433
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/swedish-house-gymnastics-1913/"
}
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fore-edge-book-paintings-from-the-boston-public-library
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Fore-Edge Book Paintings from the Boston Public Library
Text by Adam Green
Jun 7, 2018
A "fore-edge painting" is an illustration or design which appears on the "fore-edge" of a book (i.e. on the edge which is opened up, opposite to the spine). The history of such embellishments is thought to go back to the tenth century but it wasn't until the eighteenth century that the unusual practice really began to take off. The simplest form involved painting onto the fore-edge when the book was closed normally — hence the image appears by default — but a more advanced form involved a rather ingenious technique whereby the painting was applied to the page edges when the stack was fanned at a slight angle. This way the image is hidden from view when the book is closed normally. To hide any remnants of this secret image the exposed edge of the book, when closed normally, was gilded (or sometimes marbled). In his 1949 essay "On Fore-Edge Painting of Books" Kenneth Hobson came up with this rather nice metaphor to explain: "Imagine a flight of stairs, each step representing a leaf of the book. On the tread would be the painting and on the flat surface would be gold. A book painted and gilt in this way must be furled back before the picture can be seen."
Bookbinders, such as Edwards of Halifax, got even cleverer with variations of the technique, producing books with "double fore-edge paintings", where one image would be revealed when the book was fanned one way, and a second image revealed when fanned the other. "Triple fore-edge paintings" are where a third image is added instead of gilt or marbling. "Panoramic fore-edge paintings" utilise the top and bottom and edges to make continuous panoramic scenes. "Split double paintings" have two different illustrations, one on either side of the book's centre, meaning that when the book is laid open in the middle, each is seen on either side. Very rare and skilled variations of the art only reveal the image when the the pages of the book are pinched or tented in a certain way.
Most often the artwork would reflect the content of the book (as shown in the chess example above). Sometimes it would depict the owner (through a portrait or picture of their home). And occasionally it would be oddly incongruous, such as The Poetical Works of John Milton being adorned with a painting of the tomb of Thomas Gray.
One of the finest collections of fore-edge paintings is held at Boston Public Library, which you can see on their Flickr, and on a dedicated website, which includes an introductory essay by Anne C. Bromer of Bromer Booksellers, who along with her husband gifted this wonderful collection to the Boston Public Library. In this post we've featured our highlights from their collection.
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public-domain-review
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Jun 7, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:21.181356
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fore-edge-book-paintings-from-the-boston-public-library/"
}
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haxan-witchcraft-through-the-ages-1922
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Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)
Apr 11, 2018
Referred to in English as The Witches or Witchcraft Through the Ages, Häxan is a Swedish-Danish film, a curious and groundbreaking mix of documentary and silent horror cinema, written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Whereas most films of the period were literary adaptations, Christensen's take was unique, basing his film upon non-fiction works, mainly the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century treatise on witchcraft he found in a Berlin bookshop, as well as a number of other manuals, illustrations and treatises on witches and witch-hunting (a lengthy bibliography was included in the original playbill at the film's premiere). On literary adaptations Christensen commented: "In principal [sic] I am against these adaptations... I seek to find the way forward to original films." Instead Häxan was envisaged, as stated in the opening credits, as a "presentation from a cultural and historical point of view in seven chapters of moving pictures". While the bulk of the film's format, with its dramatic scenes portrayed by actors (including Christensen himself in the role of the devil), would have been familiar enough to cinema-goers at the time (although shocking in content), the first chapter, lasting 13 minutes, is a different story. With its documentary style and scholarly tone — featuring a number of photographs of statuary, paintings, and woodcuts — it would have been entirely novel — a style of screened illustrated lecture which wouldn't become popular till many years later. Indeed, the film perhaps could make a decent claim to being the first ever documentary (an accolade normally reserved for Robert J. Flaherty's ethnographic study from 1922 titled Nanook of the North). Reportedly the most expensive film of the Swedish silent film era, Häxan was actually banned in the United States, and heavily censored in other countries. In 1968, an abbreviated version of the film was released. Titled Witchcraft Through the Ages, it featured an eclectic jazz score by Daniel Humair and dramatic narration by the wonderfully gravel-toned William S. Burroughs.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 11, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:21.669191
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/haxan-witchcraft-through-the-ages-1922/"
}
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hans-holbeins-dance-of-death-1523-5
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Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death (1523–5)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Apr 17, 2018
The Dance of Death by the German artist Hans Holbein (1497–1543) is a great, grim triumph of Renaissance woodblock printing. In a series of action-packed scenes Death intrudes on the everyday lives of thirty-four people from various levels of society — from pope to physician to ploughman. Death gives each a special treatment: skewering a knight through the midriff with a lance; dragging a duchess by the feet out of her opulent bed; snapping a sailor’s mast in two. Death, the great leveller, lets no one escape. In fact it tends to treat the rich and powerful with extra force. As such the series is a forerunner to the satirical paintings and political cartoons of the eighteenth century and beyond. For example, Death sneaks up behind the judge, who is ignoring a poor man to help a rich one, and snaps his staff, the symbol of his power, in two. A chain around Death’s neck suggests he is taking revenge on corrupt judges on behalf of those they have wrongfully imprisoned. In contrast, Death seems to come to the aid of the poor ploughman, by driving his horses for him and releasing him from a life of toil; the glowing church in the background implies this old man is on his way to heaven.
Holbein drew the woodcuts between 1523 and 1525, while in his twenties and based in the Swiss town of Basel. It would be another decade before he established himself in England, where he painted his most enduring masterpiece The Ambassadors (1533), in which two wealthy, powerful and worldly young men stand above (and oblivious to) an anamorphic skull that signals the ultimate vanity of all that wealth, power and worldliness. In the 1520s, Holbein was busy trying to earn a living in Basel, painting murals and portraits, designing stained glass windows, and illustrating books. The year before he began The Dance, he had illustrated Martin Luther’s influential translation of the New Testament into German. So Holbein was working close to the heart of the accelerating movement for Church reform. It comes as little surprise, then, that Death reserves particularly grim treatment for members of the Catholic clergy. It drags off a fat abbot by his cassock, leads an abbess away by the habit as though she were an animal, and takes the form of two skeletons and two demons to see to the pope himself.
Holbein’s woodcuts were a highly original take on a medieval theme. Death had first been seen dancing in Europe in 1425, on a mural at the Paris Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. From there it had jigged its way across Europe, onto more walls (including two in Basel cemeteries) and book reproductions of them. In Holbein’s series no one is actually engaged in a dance with Death. This removes an element of comic catharsis found in the mutuality of earlier dances. Holbein’s more static figures respond to Death realistically. The old man is stoical. The panicked knight fights with all his useless might. The rich miser throws up his arms in a mix of outrage and terror. The peddler is almost too busy to even acknowledge his time has come.
Holbein’s achievement is the greater because of the miniature scale he was drawing in. Reproductions obscure just how tiny the wooden blocks were — no bigger than four postage stamps arranged in a rectangle. The blocks were cut by Hans Lützelburger, a frequent and highly skilled collaborator of Holbein’s. Lützelburger had cut forty-one blocks and had ten remaining when Death surprised him too. The blocks were then sold to creditors, and eventually printed and published for the first time in Lyons in 1538 as Les simulachres and historiees faces de la mort. Since the book's great success Holbein’s series has been consistently in print, inspiring writers and artists from Rubens in Flanders, to Millet in France, and Dickens in England. Penguin Classics recently published an excellent edition which includes much helpful historical context from Ulinka Rublack.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 17, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:22.119789
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{
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letters-to-dead-authors-1886
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Letters to Dead Authors (1886)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Apr 24, 2018
Letters to Dead Authors contains twenty-two letters written by Andrew Lang (1844–1912) to bards, poets, and novelists from Homer to Rabelais to Austen. An incredibly prolific writer from the Scottish Borders, Lang’s name can be found on 249 books and thousands of newspaper articles. As a literary critic he inspired love, fear, respect, and laughter. He was sometimes acerbic, sometimes reverential, and usually witty. There is more glowing praise in Letters to Dead Authors than scathing criticism. In fact he expresses a very, very high opinion of most of his correspondents. While this can verge on cloying, it can also be rather beautiful. For example, to Percy Bysshe Shelley he writes: "Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! ‘To ask you for anything human,’ you said, 'was like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop.’”
To Homer: “It is because thou art so great, and men so little, that they misdoubt thee… They believe not that one human soul has known every art, and all the thoughts of women as of men, all lives of beasts on hill and plain, all the innocence of childhood, and its beautiful ways, all the delight of battle, the dread of ambush, the slow agony of siege, the storms and the calms of the sea. In thy soul, as in the soul of Zeus, is the whole world mirrored.”
To Edgar Allan Poe: "But to discuss your few and elaborate poems is a waste of time, so completely does your own brief definition of poetry, ‘the rhythmic creation of the beautiful,’ exhaust your theory, and so perfectly is the theory illustrated by the poems.”
If you’d like more Andrew Lang, there is an excellent piece on his life and work in The Scotsman. You can also check out our post on his bibliophilic gem, Books and Bookmen (1886). His crowning achievement remains the twelve colour fairy books (published 1889–1910) in which he and his wife, Nora Lang, collected, edited and translated 437 fairy stories from across Europe.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 24, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:22.575781
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/letters-to-dead-authors-1886/"
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the-philosophy-of-beards-1854
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The Philosophy of Beards (1854)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
May 8, 2018
Thomas Gowing felt the mighty yet fragile English Beard to be threatened with extinction by an invasive foreign species, the Razor. So he set out to defend the furry face mammal in every conceivable way. The resulting lecture was received so enthusiastically by a bushy audience in Ipswich that it was soon turned into The Philosophy of Beards (1854) — the first book entirely devoted to this subject.
It is Gowing’s ardent belief that the bearded are better looking, better morally and better historically than the shaven. To call him a huge fan of the suburbs of the chin would be an understatement. “It is impossible” he writes “to view a series of bearded portraits . . . without feeling that they possess dignity, gravity, freedom, vigour, and completeness.” By contrast, the clean-cut look always leaves him with “a sense of artificial conventional bareness”. Gowing’s apology for the beard makes frequent appeals to nature, some of them amusingly far-fetched: “Nature leaves nothing but what is beautiful uncovered, and the masculine chin is seldom sightly, because it was designed to be covered, while the chins of women are generally beautiful.” Sometimes his argument transforms from a shield for the beard into a swipe at the chin: “There is scarcely indeed a more naturally disgusting object than a beardless old man (compared by the Turks to a ‘plucked pigeon’)”.
Gowing was writing at a time when physiognomy — the art of reading a person’s character in their facial features — was still popular in Europe and America. So it is no surprise to learn that “the absence of Beard is usually a sign of physical and moral weakness”. Gowing also takes aim at the notion that beards are unhealthy. Far from being unhygienic because of their propensity to trap feculent particles, “the beards of foreign smiths and masons filter plaster dust and metal from the air, protecting the lungs.”
In the last section, Gowing gambols through the ancient and modern past, attaching a beard or lack thereof to thousands of years of heroism and cowardice, honour and deceit. Viewing history through the prism of the beard makes things nice and simple: “The bold Barons outbearded King John, and Magna Charta was the result,” … “Henry the 7th shaved himself and fleeced his people”. Napoleon I only allowed men in his empire to have an “imperial”, an upturned triangle of a beard, as a way of letting them know “that they were to have the smallest possible share in the empire”.
At the end of his apology, Gowing issues further rebuttals of the key objections he has heard levelled against the chin curtain. It is not fair to call the beard unclean, he claims, as it takes even longer to shave it than clean it. And anyway, “the process of combing and brushing the Beard, instead of being tedious, uncertain, and often painful, like shaving, confers a positively delightful sensation, similar to that which one may imagine a cat to experience [when stroked].” Finally, he dismisses as “a foul libel” the idea that ladies don’t fancy a beard. He declares, presumably without much survey data to hand, that “Ladies, by their very nature, like everything manly, and cannot fail to be charmed by a fine flow of curling comeliness.”
By now it will be obvious that The Philosophy of Beards is of its time and place. But while the book may be male-centric, macho-centric, Anglo-centric, and chin-centric it is also very eccentric and more than a little tongue-in-(hairy-)cheek. We have not been able to find a portrait of Thomas Gowing, but there is every reason to believe that when he wrote his book, hiding behind the thick carpet around his mouth, there sat a pair of smirking lips.
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public-domain-review
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May 8, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:22.887833
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-philosophy-of-beards-1854/"
}
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ernst-haeckels-jellyfish
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Ernst Haeckel’s Jellyfish
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
May 31, 2018
The German biologist Ernst Haeckel was fascinated by medusae, the umbrella-shaped animals commonly called jellyfish. For Haeckel, whose imagination was shaped in the Romantic era, medusae expressed the exuberant yet fragile beauty of Nature. And in their ethereal forms he glimpsed a reflection of his great love Anna Sethe, who died tragically at the age of twenty-nine.
Haeckel had been engaged to Anna for four years when, in 1862, he became associate professor of zoology at the University of Jena. The job gave the adoring pair the economic security they needed to finally marry. In the same year, Haeckel published a book on radiolaria (microscopic plankton) which he furnished with stunning illustrations. In Jena, the newlyweds lived together in bliss for eighteen months. Then, on the day he was supposed to celebrate his thirtieth birthday and receive an award for his radiolaria book, Anna died suddenly, probably of a burst appendix. Haeckel became mad with grief. A partial delirium kept him in bed for eight days. A month later he wrote to a friend, “I am dead on the inside already and dead for everything. Life, nature, science have no appeal for me. How slowly the hours pass.”
Haeckel travelled to the Mediterranean town of Nice to attempt a recovery from his suicidal malaise. One day he took a walk and saw a medusa in a rock pool: “I enjoyed several happy hours watching the play of her tentacles which hang like blond hair-ornaments from the rim of the delicate umbrella-cap and which with the softest movement would roll up into thick short spirals.” He made a sketch and named the species Mitrocoma Annae [Anna’s headband].
The grace and beauty of the medusa soothed Haeckel’s grief and contributed to what would be a lifelong fascination with medusae. In The Tragic Sense of Life, Professor Robert J. Richard describes the profound impact of Anna’s death on him:
Through this acid mist, Haeckel resolved to devote himself single-mindedly to a cause that might transcend individual fragility. He would incessantly push the Darwinian ideal and oppose it to those who refused to look at life, to look at death, face on . . . After a period of recovery, Haeckel abandoned himself to an orgy of unrelenting work that yielded, after eighteen-hour days over twelve months, a mountainous two-volume monograph that laid out his fundamental ideas about evolution and morphology.
As part of his efforts to demonstrate that all living things are interconnected through evolution, he produced monographs on Siphonophorae (1869–88), Calcareous Sponges (1872), Arabian Corals (1876) and Medusae (1879–81). A year after completing the medusae book, a mighty two-volume work describing 600 species, Haeckel had a house built in Jena. He named it Villa Medusa and decorated the ceilings with frescoes of medusae that would later appear as lithographs in his classic book Art Forms in Nature (1899–1904). When one day a colleague showed him a new medusa species that he found even more beautiful than Mitrocoma Annae, he had to name it after his first wife too. He called it Desmonema annasethe and produced a sketch that the lithographer Adolf Giltsch would turn into arguably the most famous plate in Art Forms (see first image featured below).
If you would like to see more of Haeckel’s mesmerising jellyfish, he published a two-part monograph dedicated to them full of wonderful imagery: those in part one's System of Medusae published in 1879 can be seen here, and those in part two, published in 1881, from reports of the British Challenger expedition (1873–76), can be seen here. Some decades later, in 1904, many medusae pictures (often based on Haeckel's earlier monograph images) were turned into stunning lithographs by Adolf Giltsch and published in the immensely popular Art Forms of Nature (see Prestel's 2008 edition here).
In addition to creating beautiful art, Haeckel held and promoted disturbing theories on race and eugenics. You can read more about this darker side to Haeckel in Bernd Brunner's essay "Human Forms in Nature". Also read about Haeckel's role in one of science's great controversies in Nick Hopwood's "Copying Pictures, Evidencing Evolution".
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public-domain-review
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May 31, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:23.384969
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ernst-haeckels-jellyfish/"
}
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mnemonic-alphabet-of-jacobus-publicius-1482
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Mnemonic Alphabet of Jacobus Publicius (1482)
Text by Adam Green
May 9, 2018
Jacobus Publicius was a fifteenth-century rhetorician and physician who is remembered today for being the author of the first ars memoriae (or ars memorativa), a work dedicated to techniques concerning the organisation and improving of memory. Publicius' ideas were gathered in a book called Ars Oratoria. Ars Epistolandi. Ars Memorativa published in 1482, which included this wonderful illustrated alphabet featured here. Each letter of the alphabet is paired with an object (in some case more than one) which echoes its shape. A is associated with a folding ladder, B with a mandolin, C with a horseshoe, and so on. Publicius' book proved very popular and influenced many subsequent scholars concerned with memory, including the English polymath Robert Fludd, who came up with his own mnemonic alphabet.
We are featuring the original 1482 edition here (see source link below), but you can also see a copy of the slightly expanded second edition (with additional imagery) at the Wolfenbütteler Digitale Bibliothek. For some further reading on the subject we recommend The Book of Memory (2008) by Mary Carruthers.
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public-domain-review
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May 9, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:23.693533
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mnemonic-alphabet-of-jacobus-publicius-1482/"
}
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the-sky-a-film-lesson-in-nature-study-1928
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The Sky: A Film Lesson in “Nature Study” (1928)
May 24, 2018
Although it begins with a blinding sun winking through the clouds, this short educational film is focused on what can be seen in the night sky, including a look at constellations, using a telescope, the mountains of the moon (including some wonderful graphics), the planets, and ending on a closer look at the sun with which we began. Part of a series — of which we've also featured the great "Growing Things" instalment here.
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public-domain-review
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May 24, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:24.004747
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-sky-a-film-lesson-in-nature-study-1928/"
}
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mary-wollstonecrafts-adventures-in-scandinavia
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Mary Wollstonecraft’s Adventures in Scandinavia
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
May 30, 2018
In 1795 the radical philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft journeyed to Scandinavia with her infant daughter in search of stolen treasure. In letters home she mused on diverse topics from the sublime scenery to the bloody turn the French Revolution had taken. Four months later she returned to London and put together this travelogue of her adventures — an extraordinary work full of impressions and reflections that demonstrate Wollstonecraft’s hallmark freedom of mind.
She had always admired the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the favourite philosopher of the leaders of the Revolution, but unlike Rousseau she believed that women should be properly educated, that they were entitled to the same political rights as men, and that they should articulate their points of view — as she brilliantly did in A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman (1792). “Let the practice of every duty” she wrote, “be subordinate to the grand one of improving our minds...”
In the same year that treatise was published she left London for Paris, where the Jacobin Terror was about to begin. Though she never lamented the passing of the monarchy, she was horrified at the savagery of the guillotine. Moving in a bohemian circle of radicals, she met Gilbert Imlay, a debonair American revolutionary soldier and commercial adventurer. By the summer of 1793 she was pregnant.
When Britain went to war with the Jacobin government, British nationals in France started getting locked up. To prevent this, Imlay registered her as his wife at the American embassy, then left on business. Sensing the relationship slipping away, she travelled to London to be with him. Imlay though did not want to invite her and their infant daughter into his life. Distraught, Wollstonecraft swallowed a suicidal dose of laudanum but survived.
A Norwegian captain had stolen some valuable silver cargo from one of Imlay’s ships. So, with great brazenness, Imlay asked Wollstonecraft to travel to Scandinavia, find out what had happened to the treasure, and seek compensation. She agreed — how much for love and how much for adventure is not known — and set off with her daughter and a maid. For the next four months, she bargained with officials, made risky sea voyages, absorbed sublime landscapes, fed wild strawberries to her daughter, and observed society through a critical eye: “The situation of the servants in every respect, particularly that of the women, shews how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality…”
When she returned to London she discovered that Imlay was living with a new woman, an actress. At this news she went to Putney Bridge and threw herself into the Thames. Two watermen dragged her unconscious from the river and found a doctor who managed to revive her. A few weeks later she retrieved the letters she had written to Imlay from Scandinavia and fused them with her journals to create Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796). The book, which perhaps deserved a more exciting title, moved seamlessly from adventure story, to investigation of the self in nature, to reflection on the French Revolution:
An ardent affection for the human race makes enthusiastic characters eager to produce alteration in laws and governments prematurely. To render them useful and permanent, they must be the growth of each particular soil, and the gradual fruit of the ripening understanding of the nation, matured by time, not forced by an unnatural fermentation.
Contemporary readers enjoyed the descriptions of remote nature affecting a sensitive, perceptive mind. A young Robert Southey, the future poet laureate, wrote excitedly to his brother, “Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecroft’s [sic] letters from Sweden and Norway? She has made me in love with a cold climate, and frost and snow, with a northern moonlight.” The book contains some wonderful descriptive passages. One is said to have been an inspiration for the sacred river in Coleridge’s "Kubla Khan". It depicts her impressions of a great waterfall outside Fredrikstad in Norway:
My soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery? Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited, were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose, with renewed dignity, above its cares—grasping at immortality—it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me—I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.
The radical English philosopher William Godwin decided: “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.” In London, Godwin and Wollstonecraft began a love affair. Within a year she was pregnant and, despite their notorious aversion to marriage, they decided to wed. “I think you the most extraordinary married pair in existence,” a friend commented. Wollstonecraft then gave birth to a daughter, the future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818). She died shortly afterwards, aged thirty-eight.
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public-domain-review
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May 30, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:24.458217
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mary-wollstonecrafts-adventures-in-scandinavia/"
}
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the-egg-dance-from-peasant-village-to-political-caricature
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The Egg Dance: From Peasant Village to Political Caricature
Text by Adam Green
Mar 29, 2018
The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying down of eggs on the ground and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possible. Another variation (depicted in many of the images featured here) involved tipping an egg from a bowl, and then trying to flip the bowl over on top of it, all with only using one's feet and staying within a chalk circle drawn on the ground. Although, as shown in many of its depictions in art, the pastime is associated with peasant villages of the 16th and 17th century, one of the earliest references to egg-dancing relates to the marriage of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy on Easter Monday in 1498. The event was described in an 1895 issue of American Magazine:
Then the great egg dance, the special dance of the season, began. A hundred eggs were scattered over a level space covered with sand, and a young couple, taking hands, began the dance. If they finished without breaking an egg they were betrothed, and not even an obdurate parent could oppose the marriage.
After three couples had failed, midst the laughter and shouts of derision of the on-lookers, Philibert of Savoy, bending on his knee before Marguerite, begged her consent to try the dance with him. The admiring crowd of retainers shouted in approval, "Savoy and Austria!" When the dance was ended and no eggs were broken the enthusiasm was unbounded.
In his The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Joseph Strutt describes how an "indication of such a performance occurs in an old comedy, entitled The longer thou livest, the more Foole thou art, by William Wager in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, where we meet with these lines: Upon my one foote pretely I can hoppe./ And daunce it trimley about an egge." He then goes onto describe a more elaborate performance he saw in Sadler's Wells in the 1770s.
This performance was common enough about thirty years back and was well received at Sadler's Wells; where I saw it exhibited, not by simply hopping round a single egg, but in a manner that much increased the difficulty. A number of eggs, I do not precisely recollect how many, but I believe about twelve or fourteen, were placed at certain distances marked upon the stage; the dancer, taking his stand, was blind-folded, and a hornpipe being played in the orchestra, he went through all the paces and figures of the dance, passing backwards and forwards between the eggs without touching them.
This blindfolded version of the egg dance features in Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795). Wilhelm buys Mignon from a band of travelling performers after he sees her being beaten for refusing to do the egg dance, and to thank him for saving her from captivity she performs her egg dance for him (a scene depicted in John Collier's painting shown below). According to some scholars Goethe's mention gave birth to the phrase "einen wahren Eiertanz aufführen" (to perform a true egg dance) which refers to moving carefully in a difficult situation. This particularly association of the egg dance with navigating danger was expressed time and time again in political cartoons of the 19th-century: various political figures, from Bismarck to Disraeli, precariously trying to make there way about a floor strewn with potential upsets.
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public-domain-review
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Mar 29, 2018
|
Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:24.818608
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-egg-dance-from-peasant-village-to-political-caricature/"
}
|
allegorical-maps-of-love-courtship-and-matrimony
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Allegorical Maps of Love, Courtship, and Matrimony
Text by Adam Green
Jun 20, 2018
As mapmakers began to get a better and better sense of the earth's geography, some of the more playful amongst them, as well as some new to the art, turned their attentions to charting more ambiguous lands — creating maps that depicted ideas as places and the machinations of the mind and heart as a journey. While allegorical maps have been around for centuries, if not millennia, it wasn't until the eighteenth and nineteenth century that the phenomenon really took off, with some of the most wonderful examples being those dedicated to charting the highs and lows of love, courtship, and marriage. This particular focus of the allegorical map can trace its origins to the Carte de tendre, conceived by Madeleine de Scudéry for inclusion in her novel Clélie (1654-61) and engraved by François Chauveau. Here one can travel, by following the river of Inclination, from the town of Nouvelle Amitié (New Friendship) in the south to the town of Tendre (Love) in the north — that is if one can avoid the various pitfalls and obstacles which line the route, including the strangely inviting Lac D'Indiference (Lake of Indifference).
Many imitations and variations of the map followed, mainly focusing on the idea of courtly love, but these soon gave way to more libertine sentiments — a turn from the realm of love and friendship to a more overt focus on matrimony along with all the sexual themes this implied. The first of the so-called "matrimonial maps" could arguably be Thomas Sayer's A Map or Chart of the Road of Love, and Harbour of Marriage, published in 1748. Here, east of Knave's Land and north of Land of Desire, we find Cuckold's Shire, off its coast Cuckoldom Bay and Henpecked Sands, leading on to the double danger of Rocks of Jealousy and Whirlpool of Adultery.
Some twenty years later, in 1772, the prominent English poet, essayist, and literary critic Anna Laetitia Barbauld published her brilliant A New Map of the Land of Matrimony, Drawn From the Latest Surveys created to accompany her poem "To Mr. Barbauld, with a Map of the Land of Matrimony" (1772). The following description comes from Kathryn Ready's fascinating 2016 article on the map:
Barbauld's 'New Map' gives prominence not only to the vicissitudes of courtship but also to the negative outcomes of marriage. It depicts the Land of Matrimony and its associated island of Divorce surrounded by the Ocean of Love, and a number of smaller land masses, including Friesland and Coquet and Prude Islands to the northwest, and the Enchanted Islands to the southwest.
From there a proliferation of variations on the format ensued, each home to a host of novel toponyms, including such gems as Divorce Island, Country of Single Men, Land of Spinsters, Mountains of Delay (Inhabited by Lawyers), Squabble Marsh, and Port Hymen (there's also a Temple of Hymen).
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public-domain-review
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Jun 20, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:25.269746
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/allegorical-maps-of-love-courtship-and-matrimony/"
}
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the-diverting-history-of-john-gilpin-shewing-how-he-went-further-than-he-intended-and-came-safe-home-again-1782
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The Diverting History of John Gilpin: Shewing how he Went Further than he Intended, and Came Safe Home Again (1782)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Mar 27, 2018
The Diverting History of John Gilpin is a humorous ballad written by the English poet and hymnist William Cowper (1731–1800). It owes its existence to Lady Austen. One autumn afternoon in 1782 she noticed her friend William sinking into a depression. To raise his spirits she told him a story she had loved as a child, about the hilarious misadventures of a linen draper called John Gilpin. Cowper was cheered to the point that he turned the tale into a ballad, which became the most popular poem of the 1780s (to the point where pirate copies were being sold across England, together with biographies and toys of Gilpin).
The ballad begins with the draper heading and out of London to celebrate his twentieth wedding anniversary at the Bell in Edmonton. He rides a borrowed horse, while his wife, her sister, and the children are in a chaise and pair. Almost immediately poor Gilpin loses control of his horse, which speeds away with him, dislodging his hat and wig, and smashing the bottles of red wine hung over its side. It careers through Islington, leaves Edmonton and the Bell in its wake, before reaching Ware, its home, ten miles further on. At this point a “braying ass” gives it a fright and it turns and gallops all the way back to London, where the farce and Gilpin can finally terminate.
Cowper was 61 when he composed the ballad. Thirty years previously, during a serious depression, he had tried to take his own life: by swallowing a fatal dose of laudanum, drowning himself, stabbing himself with his pen knife (the blade broke), and hanging himself with a garter (it snapped just as he lost consciousness). From these depths of despair Cowper found solace and strength in composing Christian poems and hymns. One of these gave English the phrase “God moves in a mysterious way” — something true both of William Cowper and the man he immortalised, old John Gilpin.
Here we are featuring a 1906 edition of The Diverting History, published in the United States. The brilliantly comic woodcuts by Robert Seaver mimic those found in the eighteenth-century chapbooks in which many early readers encountered the ballad, in pirated form.
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public-domain-review
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Mar 27, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:25.720582
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-diverting-history-of-john-gilpin-shewing-how-he-went-further-than-he-intended-and-came-safe-home-again-1782/"
}
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e-t-a-hoffmann-s-strange-stories
|
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Strange Stories
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
May 22, 2018
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a Prussian lawyer, artist, composer and pioneering writer of horror stories. These tales, with their mysterious atmospheres and weird happenings, influenced writers such as Poe, Stevenson, Kafka and Freud. Hoffman's best-known story today is “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”, giving rise as it did to the famous ballet set to Tchaikovsky’s score.
Hoffmann practised law in order to support his ideal artistic life. His first ambition had been to paint but he soon fell in love with music (even changing one of his middle names to Amadeus in homage to Mozart). He devised several operas but by his thirties realised he would never be an exceptional composer and so took to writing fiction instead. His short, frightening stories — populated by maniacs, spectres and automata — were immensely popular. The protagonists often have split personalities – model citizens by day, murderers and thieves by night — and in them can be sensed the conflict between necessary bureaucratic lives and the wild flights of fancy possible in art.
Most of the tales in the collection of translations we are featuring, Hoffmann’s Strange Stories, first appeared in German in Nachtstücke [Night Pieces] published in 1816. Its most famous story concerns the Sandman, a benevolent character from European folklore who sprinkles magic sand into people’s eyes to help them get to sleep and to bring on good dreams (hence the sleepy dust in the corner of your eyes in the morning). In his telling, “Coppelius, the Sandman”, Hoffmann realises the dark potential lurking inside this friendly figure. Coppelius visits children who won’t go to sleep at night and throws handfuls of sand into their eyes, until they pop out. The wicked thief then flies to his iron nest on the Moon where his beaked children can feast on the bloody hoard.
In his classic essay “The Uncanny” Freud argued that this story was an example of the fear of castration. He quoted from it at length and wrote, “I would advise opponents of the psychoanalytical outlook against referring precisely to Hoffmann's story The Sandman in order to support the view that the fear for one's eyes is completely unrelated to the castration complex.”
Our favourite modern edition is The Sandman, translated by Christopher Moncrieff and published by Alma Classics, which includes Freud’s essay as an appendix. If you’d like to read a collection of his short stories, we recommend Tales of Hoffmann published by Penguin Classics.
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public-domain-review
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May 22, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:26.204215
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/e-t-a-hoffmann-s-strange-stories/"
}
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the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization-1906-1909
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The Sexual Life of our Time in its Relations to Modern Civilization ([1906] 1909)
Text by Adam Green
Jun 27, 2018
In this mammoth and encyclopaedic survey of sexual knowledge, first published in German in 1906, the physician Iwan Bloch explores topics ranging from spiritual love to wild love, traditional marriage to foot fetish, erotic painting to morning erection. A quick glance at the subject index at the back of the book gives a taste for the breadth of topics covered.
Altar of monogamy, human sacrifices on
Baldness, fetichism for
Beard: its small importance as a sexual lure
Emissions seminal
Ennoblement of our amatory life
Fornicatory dolls
Homosexuality, need for the enlightenment of the general public regarding
Lips, their relation to the genital organs
Opportunity for bestial intercourse more frequent in the country than in towns
Powders lethal to the spermatozoa
Speech: its relation to love
Succubi
Sweets, fondness for, in relation to sexuality
Testicles, in relation to the brain
Tom-cat, fornicatory act with
Typical marriages, one hundred
Wig-collectors
Sex is seen as much as a cultural and sociological phenomenon as a medical one. Applying this theory Bloch includes a chapter on pornographic literature and art, and another on free love that draws on Goethe, Shelley and the Swedish feminist Ellen Key. For Bloch, sexual love has the power to bring together the lower animal and the higher spiritual parts of human nature, and he is optimistic about the future of this process:
Love regarded … in its inner nature, as a sexual impulse most perfectly and completely infused with a spiritual content … will stand forth ever purer and more promotive of happiness, like a mirror of marvellous clearness, wherein is reflected a peculiar and accurate picture of the successive epochs of civilization.
A book titled The Sexual Life of Our Time was always going to cause a stir in Edwardian England. The 1909 translation featured here begins with a note from the publishers that the sale of the book shall be “limited to members of the legal and medical professions.” (One wonders how many early readers asked a lawyer or doctor friend to pass them a copy.) The attempt to control the readership must be in part down to Bloch’s fearless critique of conventional morality. He reserves his most stinging words for the banning of sex outside of marriage, a convention which he calls "the true cancer of our sexual life, the sole cause of the increasing diffusion of prostitution, of wild sexual promiscuity, and of venereal diseases".
As may be inferred by now, Bloch is a very big advocate of free love, which to him means “sexual union based upon intimate love, personal harmony, and spiritual affinity, entered on by the free resolve of both parties.” As for what kind of sex free lovers should embark on, Bloch is pretty open-minded. Like Freud he believes that supposedly deviant sexual inclinations and behaviours are actually pretty common, and seldom pathological. A crucial example is homosexuality, which Bloch points out “occurs in perfectly healthy individuals quite independently of degeneration and of civilization; and is diffused throughout the whole world.” This was a brave statement to make in an era when the persecution of homosexuals was normal practice.
Not much has been written about Bloch in English but we do know that he was trained as a dermatologist and based in Berlin. The range of literary references in The Sexual Life makes it plain that his radical turn of mind owes a lot to many hours spent in the Royal Library of Berlin. Under the pseudonym Eugène Dühren, Bloch also wrote an 1899 biography of the Marquis de Sade and was the first to publish Sade’s hugely controversial and often banned 120 Days of Sodom (1904), a book described by Sade himself as “the most impure tale ever written since the world began”.
Bloch’s literary endeavours did not impede his scientific output. Along with some other Berlin-based doctors, he formed the first ever medical society for sexology research, and in 1914 he began publishing the Journal of Sexology, which would collect and publish many important studies over the following two decades. He also published three volumes of the Handbook of Sexology in its Entirety Presented in Separate Studies (1912–25) but that ambitious project was nixed by Bloch’s untimely death at the age of 50.
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public-domain-review
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Jun 27, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:26.678507
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-sexual-life-of-our-time-in-its-relations-to-modern-civilization-1906-1909/"
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|
scrapbook-of-hand-coloured-juvenile-woodcut-emblems
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Scrapbook of Hand-Coloured Juvenile Woodcut Emblems
Jul 5, 2018
Books focused on the moral education of young people, particularly via the use of emblems, were all the rage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (see for example The Blossoms of Morality and The Accidents of Youth). The pages of the unique book featured here, from the Special Collections department of the UCLA Library, have had pasted onto them a collection of cut out emblems featured in such juvenile literature. There are thirty eight woodcut emblems in total, some crudely hand-colored, and judging from the limited variety of designs, only sourced from one or two books. Subjects include "folly of drunkenness", "the danger of misspending time", and "upon a little girl's playing with a painted baby".
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public-domain-review
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Jul 5, 2018
|
collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:27.290473
|
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scrapbook-of-hand-coloured-juvenile-woodcut-emblems/"
}
|
|
the-book-of-exposition-a-collection-of-15th-century-erotica-from-the-middle-east-1900
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The Book of Exposition: A Collection of 15th-Century Erotica from the Middle East (1900)
Apr 10, 2018
A decade or so after the famed Orientalist Richard Burton translated Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi’s The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight (1886), an anonymous translator became the first to critically assess and introduce for Anglophone audiences another of the Middle East’s more controversial and enigmatic texts — Kitab al-Izah Fi'ilm al-Nikah b-it-Tamam w-al-Kamal, or The Book of Exposition — a collection of fifteenth-century erotica. Despite there being much dispute over the authorship of the work, from both Western and Middle Eastern scholars over the centuries, The Book of Exposition is nowadays credited to a fifteenth-century Egyptian polymath called Jalal ad’Din al-Suyuti (1445-1505). Although perhaps best known for his co-authorship of Tafsir al-Jalalayn (Tafsir of the Two Jalals), a classical Sunni exegesis of the Quran, al-Suyuti was also a prolific erotologist, writing at least twenty-three treatises on various aspects of the sexual arts.
The two dozen stories he presents in The Book of Exposition are an exploration of promiscuity and sexual taboos under the societal constraints of the Arab-Islamic world. In “The Strange Transformation that Befell a Certain Believer’s Prickle” a man is granted a “Night of Power” in which he is given three wishes to be fulfilled by Allah. Upon learning of the gift his wife insists that he asks for his “instrument” to be lengthened. The wish is granted but when faced with a penis now “as straight as a column which would neither display suppleness, nor show itself capable of the power of elasticity and movement, nor of rest”, his wife is not pleased and threatens divorce. The man uses his second wish to ask Allah to reverse his condition, a wish again granted in extremity — the man’s “prizzle” is now near completely effaced. The third and final wish is used to return him to normal. Other stories like “The Pious Woman and What Happened to Her From Behind” are rather unambiguous in their content. The offerings vary in length, from a few sentences to a few pages, but all clearly stem from a sexually liberated mind and one (be warned) not devoid of misogynistic tendencies.
Although first translated into English in 1886 by erotica enthusiast Charles Carrington, who rendered the title as Marriage-Love and Woman amongst the Arabs, it was the 1900 English edition published by Maison d’Editions Scientifiques, in a run of just three hundred copies, that first sought to critically assess and place the work in its historical and literary context. In addition to an extensive foreword by the translator — whose name is given only as “An English Bohemian” — the edition also includes an expansive section entitled “Excurses”, which offers up appendices of other short erotica, notes, and observations, including an essay by Richard Burton on pederasty (featured also in his 1885 translation of Arabian Nights).
In his opening essay and commentary, An English Bohemian sets out to dispel Victorian attitudes to sexuality through the idolisation of the Oriental — setting up “Oriental Sexuology” as a mystical alternative for aspiring libertines/hedonists. He doesn’t just limit himself to the Orient in his examination of sexuality. He offers an insight into the sexual customs of other lands he claims to have travelled and researched extensively as a former practitioner of medicine: from Loango to the Aztecs, Paraguay to Samoa, Europe to Arabia. Despite his intentions, we perhaps end up learning more about Western attitudes to sex than the those of the non-European cultures he examines. His assertions, in their elevation of Orient over the Occident, appear to be motivated more by a desire to rebel against the prevailing establishment of his own culture than offering a nuanced picture of a foreign culture's attitudes to sex.
(Many thanks to Sherif Dhaimish who brought our attention to the book and upon whose text the above is based).
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public-domain-review
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Apr 10, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:27.717940
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-book-of-exposition-a-collection-of-15th-century-erotica-from-the-middle-east-1900/"
}
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utagawa-hiroshige-last-great-master-of-ukiyo-e
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Utagawa Hiroshige: Last Great Master of Ukiyo-e
Apr 25, 2018
Considered the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre ("pictures of the floating world"), the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was a hugely influential figure, not only in his homeland but also on Western painting. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, as a part of the trend in “Japonism”, European artists such as Monet, Whistler, and Cézanne, looked to Hiroshige’s work for inspiration, and a certain Vincent van Gogh was known to paint copies of his prints.
Hiroshige was born in 1797 to a samurai family in Edo (modern Tokyo). After his parents died, around the age of fourteen, Hiroshige began to take up painting and studied for several years under the artist Toyohiro. During this period he produced many works reflecting traditional ukiyo-e themes such as women and actors, but upon Toyohiro's death in 1828 he underwent a pronounced shift toward the landscapes for which he is best known today, as well as bird and flower images. His most famous series include Famous Views of the Eastern Capital (1831), The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834), The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō (1834–1842) and Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1852–1858).
In 1856, around the age of 60, Hiroshige "retired from the world", becoming a Buddhist monk. Two years later he passed away (during the great Edo cholera epidemic, though it's not known if this was the cause of death) and was buried in a Zen temple in Asakusa. Just before his passing, he wrote the following poem:
I leave my brush in the EastAnd set forth on my journey.I shall see the famous places in the Western Land.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 25, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:28.192398
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/utagawa-hiroshige-last-great-master-of-ukiyo-e/"
}
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british-goblins-welsh-folk-lore-fairy-mythology-legends-and-traditions-1880
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British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions (1880)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Jun 12, 2018
In British Goblins (1880) Wirt Sikes, the United States consul to Cardiff from 1876 to 1883, describes the mythology and legends of Wales, a land steeped in folklore. (Considering its geographic focus, why the book is not simply called Welsh Goblins remains a mystery.) The first section of the book concerns the fairies, which are known as “y Tylwyth Teg” in Welsh, meaning the fair folk or family. They come in five varieties: Ellyllon (elves), Coblynau (mine fairies), Bwbachod (household fairies), Gwragedd Annwn (underwater fairies), and Gwyllion (mountain fairies).
The Ellyllon are pigmy elves who haunt the groves and valleys. They dine on poisonous toadstools and fairy butter, which they extract from deep crevices in limestone rocks. Their hands are clad in the bells of the foxglove, the leaves of which are a powerful sedative. They are sometimes kindly, sometimes menacing and almost always mischievous. One variety of Ellyllon, the Ellylldan, will wait in boggy wetland and flash their fiery lures to lead travellers off the safe path, sometimes to their death.
The Coblynau populate the mines, quarries and underground regions of Wales. They are about half a metre tall, very ugly to look it, and generally good-natured. They will make a peculiar knocking or rapping sound to let miners know the whereabouts of a rich vein of ore. The word coblyn has the double meaning in Welsh of “knocker” and “sprite”. And, Wirt Sikes asks, “may it not be the original of ‘goblin’?”
The Bwbachod are friendly goblins who will help you out with chores at home or on the farm, like making butter, if you behave correctly. That means making a good fire last thing at night and leaving a bowl of cream out for the Bwbachod to drink. It also means drinking a good deal of ale yourself, for the Bwbachod hate teetotallers. There was once a Baptist preacher in Cardiganshire who was much fonder of prayers than of ale so a Bwbach took to pestering him while he prayed: jerking the stool from under him; jangling the fire-irons on the hearth; making the dogs howl; frightening the farm-boy into fits of screaming by grinning through the window. At last the Bwbach took on the exact aspect of the preacher and confronted him as he crossed a field. The preacher fainted in fright. When he eventually came to he packed up and left Cardiganshire never to return.
The Gwragedd Annwn are female fairies of the streams and lakes, particularly the isolated lakes of the high mountains, where they serve as “avenues of communication between this world and the lower one of annwn, the shadowy domain presided over by Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the fairies.”
The Gwyllion are also female fairies. They haunt the lonely roads of the Welsh mountains. Like the Ellylldan, they have a habit of luring travellers away from safety. In stormy weather they will sometimes knock on a door and ask for refuge by the fire. To refuse them is to risk great harm.
The fairies interact with non-human animals too. In the excellently titled subchapter Occult Intellectual Powers of Welsh Goats, we learn that those bearded ruminants possess secret intelligence and knowledge and are on very good terms with the fairies. Every Friday night the fairies comb their beards “to make them decent for Sunday.”
The second section of British Goblins departs fairyland and travels to the spirit world. Subchapters worth a dip include: Spectral Animals; The Gwyllgi or Dog of Darkness; The Stupid Medieval Devil in Wales; The Story of Haunted Margaret; The Corpse-Bird; and The Question of a Future Life.
Section three concerns “quaint old customs” and contains insights into such matters as: The Spiritual Potency of Buns; Marketing on Tombstones; The Puzzling Jug; Welsh Morality; and The Sin-Eater.
Section Four is all about “bells, wells, stones and dragons”. There you can discover: The Bell that committed Murder and was damned for it; The Gigantic Rock-tossers of Old; Obstacles in the way of Treasure-Seekers; Whence came the Red Dragon of Wales?; and The Goblins of Electricity.
Enjoy!
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public-domain-review
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Jun 12, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:28.655696
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{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/british-goblins-welsh-folk-lore-fairy-mythology-legends-and-traditions-1880/"
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first-recording-of-swing-low-sweet-chariot-1909
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First recording of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (1909)
Text by Adam Green
Apr 30, 2018
We don’t know for sure who created the popular African American spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, though we do know it came to popular attention by finding itself part of the repertoire of The Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1870s. One often cited source is Wallis Willis (known as “Uncle Wallace”), a Choctaw freedman in the old Indian Territory in what is now Choctaw County, in Oklahoma. According to the Library of Congress, in the mid nineteenth century, “Uncle Wallace” was rented out to a local school for Native American boys where he is said “to have entertained the boys by singing spirituals he composed, including ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.” The school’s headmaster was apparently so taken by this spiritual that he noted it down and shared it, along with several other spirituals, with the Jubilee Singers when he heard them at a concert in New Jersey.” Another, more dramatic, origin story is also told:
John W. Work claimed that the spiritual “burst forth” from the anguished soul of Sarah Hannah Sheppard, the mother of Ella Sheppard of Fisk Jubilee Singer fame. Sarah gave birth to Ella on a Tennessee plantation in 1851. When she learned that her master intended to sell her to another plantation, thus separating her permanently from Ella, she resolutely set out for the Cumberland River, intent on drowning both herself and her daughter. She was stopped by an “old mammy” who cautioned Sarah to “let de chariot of de Lord swing low.” Reaching toward heaven, the wise woman pulled down an imaginary scroll and prophesied that the young child would one day stand before kings and queens. Sarah yielded to the old woman’s counsel, turned back, and allowed herself to be sold and taken to Mississippi. Ella did indeed perform before royalty. She eventually reunited with her mother and brought her to live with her in Nashville.
Whatever the truth to its beginnings, the lyrics are thought to be referencing the Bible story of Prophet Elijah’s being taken to heaven by a chariot, and also possibly the “Underground Railroad”, the freedom movement that helped black people escape from Southern slavery to the North and Canada.
Featured here is the first known recording of the song performed in December 1909 for Victor Studios by the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet (pictured above), a male foursome carrying on the legacy of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s.
The unaccompanied recording of the quartet showcased the talent of four Fiskites: John Wesley Work II (1st tenor), James Andrew Myers (2nd tenor), Alfred Garfield King (1st bass), and Noah Ryder (2nd bass). By the time of the 1909 recording session, Fisk University had earned a reputation as being the “music conservatory” for aspiring black artists, primarily due to the immense fame of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, who toured in the interest of the university from 1871-1878.
The 1909 recording popularised the song hugely, helping it become one of the best known African American spirituals. Over the last century composers have arranged it for choral ensembles, concert soloists, jazz bands, concert bands, dance bands, and symphony orchestras, and it has been recorded countless times by popular musicians, from Paul Robeson to Johnny Cash, from Fats Waller to Eric Clapton. The song has also been adopted by England’s rugby fans who’ve sung its emotional strains at games for decades.
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public-domain-review
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Apr 30, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:29.124755
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{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-recording-of-swing-low-sweet-chariot-1909/"
}
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the-bakemono-zukushi-monster-scroll-18th-19th-century
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The Bakemono Zukushi “Monster” Scroll (18th–19th century)
Jun 5, 2018
These wonderful images featured here are from a Japanese painted scroll known as the Bakemono zukushi. The artist and date is unknown, though its thought to hail from the Edo-period, sometime from the 18th or 19th century. Across it's length are depicted a ghoulish array of "yokai" from Japanese folklore. In his The Book of Yokai, Michael Dylan Foster describes a yokai as:
a weird or mysterious creature, a monster or fantastic being, a spirit or a sprite ... creatures of the borderlands, living on the edge of town, or in the mountains between villages, or in the eddies of a river running between two rice fields. They often appear at twilight, that gray time when the familiar seems strange and faces become indistinguishable. They haunt bridges and tunnels, entranceways and thresholds. They lurk at crossroads.
The class of yokai characterised by an ability to shapeshift, and that featured in this scroll, is the bakemono (or obake), a word literally meaning "changing thing" or "thing that changes". The founding father of minzokugaku (Japanese folklore studies), Yanagita Kuno (1875–1962), drew a distinction between yurei (ghosts) and bakemono: the former haunt people and are associated with the depth of night, whereas the latter haunt places and are seen by the dim light of dusk or dawn.
Amongst the bakemono monsters depicted in the scroll is the rokurokubi (ろくろくび), a long-necked woman whose name literally means "pulley neck". Whether shown with a completely detachable head (more common in Chinese versions), or with head upon the end of a long threadlike neck as shown here, the head of the rokurokubi has the ability to fly about independently of the body. In his 1904 collection Kwaidan, Lafcadio Hearn provides the first extended discussion of this yokai in English, telling of a samurai-turned-travelling-priest who finds himself staying the night in a household of rokurokubi intent on eating their guest.
Yuki-onna ("snow woman" - 雪女) appears on snowy nights as a beautiful woman with long hair. Details vary from region to region — in some parts a sighting would mean your spirit being drawn from your body, in other parts she asks you to hold her baby. Explanations for her vary too, for some she is the spirit of the snow, for others the ghost of a woman who perished in the snow, or even as a moon princess expelled from the sky-world. Yuki-onna again appears in Hearn's Kwaidan, where she visits two woodcutters caught in a snowstorm, killing the older by blowing in his face, and promising to kill the younger if he ever tells of what happened (which, many years later, he does).
Kami-kiri ("hair cutter" - 髪切) is a yokai known for sneaking up on people and cutting off their hair. The phenomenon of people's hair being mysteriously chopped appeared in many urban legends, in the Edo period in particular. Sometimes the chop would be attributed to a "demon wind", but often to a creature doing the cutting, such as the kamikiri-mushi (a "hair cutting- insect", likely in reference to the praying mantis, with its scythelike front limbs, and named a very similar-sounding kamakiri in Japanese). In the Bakemono zukushi, it appears with a bird like face and huge pincer hand brandishing the severed crop.
Below we've featured our highlights from the scroll (see the whole thing complete here), the digitisation of which appears to have come from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies - Yokai Database. Many thanks to Pink Tentacle, from whom we've taken the image descriptions. If you want to learn more about yokai in general then do check out Michael Dylan Foster's fascinating The Book of Yokai.
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public-domain-review
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Jun 5, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:29.446755
|
{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-bakemono-zukushi-monster-scroll-18th-19th-century/"
}
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class-of-2018
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Class of 2018
Dec 19, 2017
Pictured above is our top pick of artists and writers whose works will, on 1st January 2018, enter the public domain in many countries around the world. Of the eleven featured, seven will be entering the public domain in countries with a "life plus 70 years" copyright term (e.g. most European Union members, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, etc.) and four in countries with a "life plus 50 years" copyright term (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, and many countries in Asia and Africa) — those that died in the year 1947 and 1967 respectively. As always it's a miscellaneous medley assembled for our graduation photo, including one of the chief figures of the Surrealist movement, Gertrude Stein's lover, the other Winston Churchill, a war poet, and a mystic, magician, and mountaineer once denounced as the “the wickedest man in the world”.
Below is a little bit more about each of their lives (with each name linking through to their respective Wikipedia pages, from which each text has been based).
Aleister Crowley
(1875–1947)
Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. After attending the University of Cambridge (where some biographers allege he was recruited as a British spy), in 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. In 1904, while on his honeymoon in Cairo, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and an individualist social critic. He was denounced in the popular press as "the wickedest man in the world" and a Satanist. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counter-culture, and continues to be considered a prophet in Thelema.
René Magritte
(1898–1967)
René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images which often depicted ordinary objects in an unusual context, and so challenging the observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality. His work was hugely influential, especially in pop, minimalist and conceptual art. Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."
Siegfried Sassoon
(1886–1967)
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy".
Alice B. Toklas
(1877–1967)
Alice Babette Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein. Toklas met Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived there from San Francisco after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Together they hosted a salon in the home they shared that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson; and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque. Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until the publication by Stein of Toklas' "memoirs" in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which went on to become Stein's best-selling book. In 1954 Toklas published a book of her own, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, which mixed reminiscences and recipes. The most famous recipe, contributed by her friend Brion Gysin, is for "Haschich Fudge", a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and "canibus sativa" [sic] or marijuana. Her name was later lent to the range of cannabis concoctions called "Alice B. Toklas brownies" (despite the fact that the "Haschich Fudge" recipe did not originate with Toklas, nor is there any record that she ever made it herself). In 1963 Toklas published her autobiography What Is Remembered, which ends abruptly with the death of Stein.
Pierre Bonnard
(1867–1947)
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis. Bonnard preferred to work from memory, using drawings as a reference, and his paintings are often characterized by a dreamlike quality. The intimate domestic scenes, for which he is perhaps best known, often include his wife Marthe de Meligny. Bonnard has been described as "the most thoroughly idiosyncratic of all the great twentieth-century painters", and the unusual vantage points of his compositions rely less on traditional modes of pictorial structure than voluptuous color, poetic allusions and visual wit. Identified as a late practitioner of Impressionism in the early 20th century, Bonnard has since been recognized for his unique use of color and his complex imagery. "It's not just the colors that radiate in a Bonnard", writes Roberta Smith, "there’s also the heat of mixed emotions, rubbed into smoothness, shrouded in chromatic veils and intensified by unexpected spatial conundrums and by elusive, uneasy figures."
Winston Churchill
(1871–1947)
Winston Churchill was an American best-selling novelist of the early 20th century. He is nowadays overshadowed, even as a writer, by a certain cigar-toting British statesman of the same name, with whom he was acquainted, but not related. Their lives had some interesting parallels. They both gained their tertiary education at service colleges and briefly served (during the same period) as officers in their respective countries' armed forces (one was a naval, the other an army officer). Both Churchills were keen amateur painters, as well as writers. Both were also politicians; although here the comparison is far more tenuous: the British Churchill's political career being far more illustrious.
M. P. Shiel
(1865–1947)
Matthew Phipps Shiell – known as M. P. Shiel – was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name. He is remembered mostly for supernatural horror and scientific romances, and his work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel. H. G. Wells lauded the novel as "brilliant" and H. P. Lovecraft later praised it as exemplary weird fiction, "delivered with a skill and artistry falling little short of actual majesty."
Jean Toomer
(1894–1967)
Jean Toomer was an African American poet and novelist commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance (though he actively resisted the association) and modernism. His first book Cane, published in 1923, is considered by many to be his most significant. He continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. After his second marriage in 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.
P. D. Ouspensky
(1878–1947)
Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii (known in English as Peter D. Ouspensky), was a Russian mathematician and esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915. He shared the (Gurdjieff) "system" for 25 years in England and the United States, having separated from Gurdjieff in 1924 personally, for reasons he explains in the last chapter of his book In Search of the Miraculous, which recounts what he learned from Gurdjieff during those years. Some, including his close pupil Rodney Collin, say that he finally gave up the system in 1947, just before his death, but his own recorded words on the subject ("A Record of Meetings", published posthumously) do not clearly endorse this judgement, nor does Ouspensky's emphasis on "you must make a new beginning" after confessing "I've left the system".
Anna Wickham
(1883–1947)
Anna Wickham was the pseudonym of Edith Alice Mary Harper, a British poet with strong Australian connections. She is remembered as a modernist figure and feminist writer, though one who did not command sustained critical attention in her lifetime. Her reputation has improved since her death and she is now regarded as an important early 20th-century writer. During the 1930s she was well known in literary London, and wrote a great deal of poetry (much of which was later lost in war damage); but found it harder to get published. She did have support from the somewhat louche quarter of John Gawsworth, who put out a Richards Press collection of her work in 1936. An extended autobiographical essay Prelude to a Spring Clean dates from 1935, the year in which she supported the just-married Dylan Thomas and Caitlin, and then quarrelled with them. She committed suicide during the winter of 1947.
Hans Fallada
(1893–1947)
Hans Fallada (born Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen) was a German writer whose better known novels include Little Man, What Now? (1932) and Every Man Dies Alone (1947). The latter — based on the true story of a German couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who were executed for producing and distributing anti-Nazi material in Berlin during the war — was completed just before his death from a weakened heart after years of addiction to morphine, alcohol and other drugs. It was published by Penguin in 2010 under the title Alone in Berlin.
And a few others that didn't make it to the class photo....
Kathleen Scott
Riichi Yokomitsu
Che Guevara
John Masefield
Arthur Ransome
Some people you think we've missed? Please let us know in the comments!
To learn more about Public Domain Day visit publicdomainday.org. For more names whose works will be going into the public domain in 2018 see the Wikipedia pages on 1947 and 1967 deaths (which you can fine-tune down to writers and artists), and also this dedicated page.
Wondering what will enter the public domain through copyright expiration in the U.S.? Like last year, and the year before...Nothing (apart from unpublished works whose authors died in 1947).
Wondering if "bad things happen to works when they enter the public domain"? Wonder no more.
(Learn more about the situation in the U.S. and why the public domain is important in this article in Huff Post Books and this from the Duke Law School's Centre for the Study of the Public Domain).
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public-domain-review
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Dec 19, 2017
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:30.406749
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{
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/class-of-2018/"
}
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a-collection-of-fashionable-english-words-1887
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A Collection of Fashionable English Words (1887)
Jan 23, 2018
These two Japanese woodcuts by Kamekichi Tsunajima, from a series titled "Ryūkō eigo zukushi" (A Collection of Fashionable English Words), show images of animals, activities and objects each with their Japanese and English names. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) some spelling mistakes have given rise to some interesting new activities such as "Refreshiug" and "Cuting Rice", and the "Gaot", "Hoise" and "Tea Po". The introduction of activities (including the very Zen-like "Looking Moon") give an interesting take on the often more object-orientated Western equivalents. Also worth noting the interesting additions of "Cross Child" rather than simply "Child" , and "Blank Book" rather than "Book".
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public-domain-review
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Jan 23, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:30.874429
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-collection-of-fashionable-english-words-1887/"
}
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first-english-edition-of-michel-de-montaigne-s-essays-1603
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First English Edition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays (1603)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Feb 28, 2018
In the late sixteenth century the philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) felt drawn to express himself in energetic, playful meditations which he called “essais” — meaning “trials” or “attempts”. Thus a new literary genre was born. Though work-shy school children might have reason to hate the father of the essay, others have savoured the artistry of his creations. “This talking of oneself,” wrote Virginia Woolf, “following one’s own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its imperfection — this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne.”
At the age of thirty-eight, Montaigne retreated from the public sphere in Bordeaux to the family chateaux thirty miles inland. He carved quotes by his favourite authors into the wooden beams of his library, and poured much of the remaining twenty years of his life into his meditations. The resulting Essais (1580–88) interrogate a dizzying array of subjects: grief, friendship, coaches, drunkenness, impotence, smells, theology, education, war, animal intelligence, music, the New World, idleness, death, thumbs. Montaigne called his Essais:
A register of varied and changing occurrences, of ideas which are unresolved and, when needs be, contradictory, either because I myself have become different or because I grasp hold of different attributes or aspects of my subjects. So I may happen to contradict myself but, as Demades said, I never contradict truth.
Probably the most revolutionary thing about the Essais is their self-awareness. Other writers had interrogated themselves, such as Augustine in his Confessions (AD 397–400), but none with the acuteness or completeness of Montaigne:
If I speak diversely of myself, it is because I look diversely upon myself. . . . Shamefaced, bashful, insolent, chaste, luxurious, peevish, prattling, silent, fond, doting, labourious, nice, delicate, ingenious, slow, dull, froward, humorous, debonaire, wise, ignorant, false in words, true-speaking, both liberal, covetous, and prodigal. All these I perceive in some measure or other to be in mine, according as I stir or turn myself.
In 1603, the Italian linguist John Florio translated the Essais into poetic, wildly inventive, but nonetheless idiomatic Elizabethan prose. Now “done into English” the Essayes made a real splash in the minds of the reading public. William Shakespeare’s attention was caught by a passage in “Of the Cannibals” in which Montaigne describes the people of the New World:
[They] hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal...
Shakespeare fed this utopian description into the mouth of Gonzalo in The Tempest (1611). Daydreaming about what he would do if he were king of the island he and his friends have been shipwrecked on, Gonzalo says:
No kind of trafficWould I admit, no name of magistrate;Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,And use of service, none; contract, succession,Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;No occupation, all men idle, all;And women too—but innocent and pure;No sovereignty –(II .i.148–56)
Thousands more early modern English readers were influenced by Florio’s Montaigne. In the marginal notes of their copies of the Essayes you will find agreement and disagreement, offence, and enjoyment — but never boredom. As the clergyman Abiel Borft put it in his copy: “Montaign hath the Art above all men to keep his Reader from sleeping.”
If you’d like to read Montaigne in modern English we recommend The Complete Essays translated by M.A. Screech (Penguin, 1993). As well as providing the clearest access to the more conceptually challenging passages, the edition includes an excellent introduction and footnotes revealing Montaigne’s sources. For a highly enjoyable take on his life, thought, and reception we recommend Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010). Phillipe Desan has written a more academic biography, Montaigne: A Life (2017), which draws attention to the political player behind the solitary philosopher.
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public-domain-review
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Feb 28, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:31.384573
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-english-edition-of-michel-de-montaigne-s-essays-1603/"
}
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autographs-for-freedom-1853
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Autographs for Freedom (1853)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Feb 20, 2018
Autographs for Freedom, published in 1853, is an anthology of literature designed to help “sweep away from this otherwise happy land, the great sin of SLAVERY.” It was put together by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and includes the only published fiction of Frederick Douglass, who would go on to become the first black citizen to hold high rank in the US government. His “The Heroic Slave” is a work of historical fiction centering on Madison Washington, the man made famous in 1841 for leading a rebellion on the Creole, a slave ship en route to New Orleans from Virginia. Having taken control the rebels managed to redirect the Creole to Nassau in the Bahamas. Because it was a British colony, slavery had been outlawed there since 1833. Upon arrival in Nassau 128 of the 135 slaves aboard the Creole gained their freedom. It was the most successful revolt of enslaved people in US history.
The driving force behind the anthology was an Englishwoman named Julia Griffiths, a prominent member of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. She had first met Frederick Douglass in London in the mid 1840s. Douglass had escaped his life of captivity in 1838, at the age of twenty, fleeing Baltimore and reaching New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a labourer and evaded suspicion. In 1841, at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, he was invited to describe his experiences under slavery. His spontaneous remarks so stirred the audience that he was catapulted into a key player in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. An orator and wordsmith of great power, he went on to write a classic memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Upon its publication, fearing he would be recaptured because it mentioned the name of his former owner, Douglass left the US to tour the British Isles, give speeches, and build support for emancipation. It was there that he met and befriended Julia Griffiths. When Douglass returned to America he did so with enough funds to purchase his freedom and to set up an anti-slavery newspaper. In 1849, Griffiths sailed to Rochester, New York, to join Douglass. She supported his work and co-founded the influential Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, along with five other women.
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public-domain-review
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Feb 20, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:31.831009
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/autographs-for-freedom-1853/"
}
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george-mayerle-s-eye-test-chart-ca-1907
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George Mayerle’s Eye Test Chart (ca. 1907)
Text by Adam Green
Dec 12, 2017
This fantastic eye chart — measuring 22 by 28 inches with a positive version on one side and negative on the other — is the work of German optometrist and American Optometric Association member George Mayerle, who was working in San Francisco at end of the nineteenth century, just when optometry was beginning to professionalise. The chart was a culmination of his many years of practice and, according to Mayerle, its distinctive international angle served also to reflect the diversity and immigration which lay at the heart of the city in which he worked. At the time it was advertised as “the only chart published that can be used by people of any nationality”. Stephen P. Rice, from the National Library of Medicine (who house this copy presented here), explains just how throughly thought through the different aspects of the chart were as regards the aim to be as inclusive as possible:
Running through the middle of the chart, the seven vertical panels test for acuity of vision with characters in the Roman alphabet (for English, German, and other European readers) and also in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew. A panel in the center replaces the alphabetic characters with symbols for children and adults who were illiterate or who could not read any of the other writing systems offered. Directly above the center panel is a version of the radiant dial that tests for astigmatism. On either side of that are lines that test the muscular strength of the eyes. Finally, across the bottom, boxes test for color vision, a feature intended especially (according to one advertisement) for those working on railroads and steamboats.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 12, 2017
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:32.277955
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/george-mayerle-s-eye-test-chart-ca-1907/"
}
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the-whims-1799-and-the-follies-1815-23-of-francisco-goya
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The Whims (1799) and The Follies (1815–23) of Francisco Goya
Text by Adam Green
Nov 28, 2017
At some point in late 1792 or early 1793, the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya was struck by a severe and undiagnosed illness which left him deaf and disillusioned, and marked the beginning of his so-called "mid period" (1793–99) which saw his work became progressively darker and pessimistic. The crowning achievement of these troubled years was a set of eighty aquatinted etchings created between 1797 and 1798, and published in 1799 as Los caprichos (The Whims). Produced alongside more official commissions, the visionary prints depict what Goya described as "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual". The criticisms of the eighteenth-century Spain in which he lived, and humanity in general, are far-ranging: the prevalence of superstition, the ignorance of the ruling class, marital strife, and the decline of rationality, all fall prey to Goya's acerbic satire and wit.
Some two decades later Goya would create a series titled Los disparates (The Follies), which like Los caprichos sought to condemn the foibles and follies of civilized society. Produced between 1815 and 1823, while Goya lived in his house on whose walls he painted the famous Black Paintings, the series was not published until 1864, nearly thirty years after his death, under the title Proverbios (Proverbs). Comprising twenty-two prints in total it would be Goya's last major series of prints, and is full of enigmatic and dream-like imagery thought to be connected to political issues of the day and traditional Spanish proverbs. Below we've selected some of our favourites from the two series, all sourced from the Rijksmuseum.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 28, 2017
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:32.782214
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-whims-1799-and-the-follies-1815-23-of-francisco-goya/"
}
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curiosities-from-the-museum-of-giovanni-carafa-1778
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Curiosities from the Museum of Giovanni Carafa (1778)
Text by Adam Green
Jan 31, 2018
These fantastic depictions of various Roman antiquities are sourced from Alcuni monumenti del Museo Carrafa (1778), a wonderful catalogue of objects once found in the private museum of 18th-century antiquities collector Giovanni Carafa, the Duke of Noja (now called Noicattaro, a town near Bari in southern Italy ). Born in 1715, Carafa studied grammar and literature but soon developed an interest in scientific subjects, mainly mathematics. Around 1738 he was appointed lecturer of Optics and Mathematics at the University of Naples, and there he continued to explore his interests in the natural sciences, especially geology and mineralogy. He soon began collecting archaeological and numismatic pieces concerning southern Italy and established a small museum (which would become part of the collection of Museo di Capodimonte in 1771). He is perhaps most famous today for having created a topographical map of the city of Naples and its neighbourhoods, the first of its kind.
For each image presented in his Alcuni monumenti del Museo Carrafa Carafa wrote a small commentary, telling the reader more about the objects they depict and his ideas on what they signify. We've used these summaries to do likewise for each of the images we've selected — and a massive grazie mille to Giorgia Coghi for her help in translating from the Italian into English.
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public-domain-review
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Jan 31, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:33.260894
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/curiosities-from-the-museum-of-giovanni-carafa-1778/"
}
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drawings-of-tetradons-and-diodons-ca-1838-42
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Drawings of Tetradons and Diodons (ca. 1838–42)
Mar 6, 2018
These wonderful drawings of balloonfish and pufferfish were made during, or shortly after, the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. Known as "U.S. Ex. Ex." for short, or the "Wilkes Expedition" after its commanding officer Charles Wilkes, the exploratory voyage traveled the Pacific Ocean and collected more than 60,000 plant and bird specimens and the seeds of 648 species. This sheer volume of data collected was of major importance to the growth of science in the United States, in particular the emerging field of oceanography. Accompanying the naval officers and the many scientists were two artists, Joseph Drayton and Alfred Agate, who are behind the images presented here, along with a man named John Richard who was hired upon the expedition's return to prepare the illustrative plates for the work on ichthyology. According to the Smithsonian Institution Archives, which house the works, this particular set of images didn't quite make the grade, however, as they were found in envelopes marked as "rejected" or "rejected for publication".
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public-domain-review
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Mar 6, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:33.729313
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/drawings-of-tetradons-and-diodons-ca-1838-42/"
}
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steam-powered-tooth-extraction-on-an-envelope-1894
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Steam-Powered Tooth Extraction on an Envelope (1894)
Text by Adam Green
Feb 17, 2018
This wonderful sketch of "teeth painlessly extracted by steam power" appears on an envelope addressed to a certain Dr J. Chapman of Totton, Southampton. As to whether he is the creator of the drawing also (or indeed someone in his household), the jury is out -- though the idea that the envelope made its way through the Victorian postal system so adorned is rather a nice thought. There seem to be arguments either way. Looking closely one can see that the ink from the drawing overlays the stamp in the left hand corner, which would imply it made its way onto the envelope after postage (if the late 19th-century mailing process was anything like today's), though mysteriously also part of the address (the "D" of Dr) appears to overlay the stamp. All quite confusing. Also, are there unnatural gaps between the "m" and "a" of "Chapman", and between the "c" and "o" of "Beaconsfield", where the pulley runs, and so implying the address was written around the drawing? Also, is the drawing signed "C. E. H." to the bottom left? If so, does that imply someone other than Chapman? Someone else in his house-hold? The sender of the letter? "Chapman's Envelope Handiwork"?
If an expert on Victorian postal systems, or indeed, a handwriting expert (are the address and caption to the drawing done by the same hand?), can help out all would love to your ideas in the comments. Likewise regarding who this Dr J. Chapman was. We tried to find out a bit more about him, but alas to no avail. There's an outside chance it could be physician and publisher John Chapman (1821–1894) famous for running the influential radical journal the Westminster Review (which provided an important platform for ideas on evolution), and whose assistant, was Mary Ann Evans (AKA George Eliot). It appears this Chapman did have one loose link to Southampton, in that he wrote to the Times in 1866 to describe his use of ice packs to treat cholera patients in the city.
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public-domain-review
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Feb 17, 2018
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Adam Green
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:34.264550
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/steam-powered-tooth-extraction-on-an-envelope-1894/"
}
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images-from-german-caterpillar-calendar-1837
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Images from German “Caterpillar Calendar” (1837)
Jan 16, 2018
These wonderful illustrations come from Chronologischer Raupenkalender, oder, Naturgeschichte der europäischen Raupen (1837), an entomological volume by Christian Friedrich Vogel outlining which caterpillars appear each month, as well as details on how to keep caterpillars and catch the butterflies into which they will transform. An added quirk of the book will be more immediately obvious to German speakers — Vogel means "bird", the caterpillar's main predator.
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public-domain-review
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Jan 16, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:34.726188
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/images-from-german-caterpillar-calendar-1837/"
}
|
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adeline-harris-sears-autographs-quilt-1856-ca-1863
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Adeline Harris Sears’ Autographs Quilt (1856–ca.1863)
Text by Adam Green
Mar 1, 2018
In 1856, a seventeen-year-old girl from Rhode Island embarked on a unique and brilliant quiltmaking project. The girl's name was Adeline Harris and her project was to make a quilt incorporating hundreds of celebrity autographs. While signature quilts were nothing new, the contributions were typically sourced from within a small community, such as a church, and functioned to commemorate a single event, such as a birth or marriage — Adeline, however, had bigger ideas, her community as the notable figures of her day, her event the phenomenon of nineteenth-century celebrity. Although one might imagine Adeline dutifully lugging a quilt to all corners of the globe for the famous to adorn with their scrawl, her process was much more ingenious (and practical). She sent a small diamond of white silk in the post with an explanation of her project and a request that they send it back to her signed. The returned and now autographed fragments were then worked into the quilt as the "top" planes in a wonderful trompe l'oeil tumbling block design. The response she got to her unusual request was nothing short of phenomenal — she ended up incorporating 360 signed pieces in total, including those from such luminaries as Jacob Grimm, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Abraham Lincoln (one of eight American presidents represented). According to her grand-daughter the Lincoln signature was, due to a family connection, actually acquired in person, and Adeline was meant to have even danced with Lincoln at his inauguration ball. Many of the pieces included a short message in addition to the signature. The diamond from the poet and editor N. P. Willis includes the following (suggestive?) rhyme: "Dream what thou willst / beneath this quilt, / My blessing still is — Yours."
One of the people Adeline contacted in 1864 was Sarah Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, who, as well as providing her signature, also promptly wrote up "the very beautiful idea" in her magazine. Hale explains how it is not only the signed pieces which tell a story:
Each autograph is written, with common black ink, on a diamond shaped piece of white silk (placed over a diagram of white paper and basted at the edges), each piece the centre of a group of colored diamonds, formed in many instances, from "storied" fragments of dresses which were worn in the olden days of our country. For instance, there are pieces of a pink satin dress which flaunted at one of President Washington's dinner parties; with other relics of those rich silks and stiff brocades so fashionable in the last century.
And, as Hale explains in her later Manners, Happy Homes and Good Society All the Year Round (1868), there was meaning in their arrangement too:
Then comes the intellectual part, the taste to assort colors and to make the appearance what it ought to be, where so many hundreds of shades are to be matched and suited to each other. After that we rise to the moral, when human deeds are to live in names, the consideration of the celebrities, who are to be placed each, the centre of his or her own circle! To do this well requires a knowledge of books and life, and an instinctive sense of the fitness of things, so as to assign each name its suitable place in this galaxy of stars or diamonds.
As for the process, conservator Elena Philips explains that, after examining the seams along the quilt top, it can be seen that "first she stitched the individual diamonds into blocks, then connected the blocks into columns, and finally seamed the columns together across the entire width. In total, she cut and stitched 1,840 individual silk pieces to create the quilt... [and used] more than one hundred and fifty different silk fabrics."
This is just one example from the Metropolitan Museum's superb collection of 151 American quilts and coverlets, more about which you can read in curator Amelia Peck's American Quilts and Coverlets in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009). We are also selling a print of the "autograph quilt" in our online shop (though be aware that the signatures will likely be too small to be legible!).
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public-domain-review
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Mar 1, 2018
|
Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:35.046385
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/adeline-harris-sears-autographs-quilt-1856-ca-1863/"
}
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the-salad-oil-style-of-jan-toorop
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The “Salad Oil Style” of Jan Toorop
Text by Adam Green
Nov 21, 2017
In 1894, the Nederlandse Olie Fabriek (The Dutch Oil Company) commissioned a poster to advertise their "salad oil" — so iconic did the resulting artwork become, with its stylised swathes of dress and hair, that it lent the Dutch Art Nouveau its moniker, the "salad oil style". The artist behind the image, and the man at the heart of the influential movement it came to represent, was Jan Toorop (1858–1928). Born on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies, Toorop settled in the Netherlands at the age of eleven. After studying art at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, he’d spend his time between The Hague, Brussels, England (where his wife was from), and, after 1890, the Dutch seaside town of Katwijk aan Zee. It was during this time that he developed his distinctive style: highly stylised figures, embedded in complex curvilinear designs, with his dynamic line showing influence from his Javanese roots. While perhaps most famous for turning these techniques to his exquisite poster designs, Toorop also produced a substantial body of work far removed from the anodyne demands of the advertising industry, beautiful but haunting works dealing with darker subjects such as loss of faith and death.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 21, 2017
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Adam Green
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collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:35.367106
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-salad-oil-style-of-jan-toorop/"
}
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omega-the-last-days-of-the-world-1894
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Omega: The Last Days of the World (1894)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Jan 25, 2018
A great green comet made of lethal carbon monoxide is hurtling towards the Earth. Cue apocalyptic panic. So far so Hollywood disaster movie. But the similarity between Camille Flammarion's novel Omega (1894) and the film Armageddon (1998) — in which Bruce Willis destroys himself to destroy a comet before it destroys the Earth — ends at comets. The one in Omega misses the Earth by itself, albeit by a narrow, spectacular margin. It’s only then that the narrative heart of the novel begins to pump in earnest. Suddenly we shoot forward to the 100th century AD, when evolution has refined the human senses and supplied two new ones, an electric and a psychic, “by which communication at a distance is possible”. Several more million years pass, and as the Sun cools the Earth begins to freeze over. The last surviving humans, Omegar and Eva, accept that they are soon to die. But before they do so a spirit whisks them off to Jupiter, where they find the rest of humanity living in cleansed and purified form. This might seem like a natural end to a novel centrally concerned with the transmigration and final destination of human souls. Yet Flammarion refuses to stop there. In the last pages of the book the whole solar system dies, followed by the cosmos itself, making way for new universes: “And these universes passed away in their turn. But infinite space remained, peopled with worlds, and stars, and souls, and suns; and time went on forever. For there can be neither end nor beginning.”
Flammarion was a very popular and influential author — a kind of Carl Sagan of his day, capable of both scientific rigour and mystical flamboyance, sometimes on the same page. Adam Roberts, in his The History of Science Fiction (2016), referred to him as “The major figure of 19th-century mystical science fiction”. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells both owe debts to him. A year after Omega appeared in English, Wells published The Time Machine (1895) which imagines the Earth’s last inhabitant, thirty million years hence, to be a monstrous crab moving slowly along a desolate beach, as the universe freezes towards its final moment. Flammarion, though, was not primarily a writer. He was better known as an astronomer, who observed unusual stellar phenomena — particularly novae — first as a student at the Paris Observatoire, and later at his own observatory just south of the capital. He also made several aerial voyages over Paris, at a time when ballooning was still a risky business, to gather meteorological data (and perhaps to get even closer to the super-earthly realms that so preoccupied him).
Featured here is the first English translation of Omega, published by The Cosmopolitan Publishing Company (New York) in 1894. In 1999, it was brought back into print by Bison Books, complete with an introduction by Robert Silverberg and all the moody, wonderful illustrations of the original (a selection of which we've featured below).
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public-domain-review
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Jan 25, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:35.654909
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/omega-the-last-days-of-the-world-1894/"
}
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cryptography-or-the-history-principles-and-practice-of-cipher-writing-1898
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Cryptography: or the History, Principles, and Practice of Cipher-Writing (1898)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Feb 14, 2018
Frederick Edward Hulme (1841–1909) was an artist, naturalist and antiquarian who loved to write books. He did so on flowers, butterflies, moths, Christian art, heraldry, flags, proverbs, and folklore. In 1898 he bent his pen towards Cryptography, an exploration of covert communication through history. “That which is secret and mysterious,” he wrote, “calling for acute intelligence to penetrate its meaning, has always exercised a great fascination on the human mind.” And none more so than Hulme’s. The book is full of enthusiastic attempts to find the value in ancient cipher systems, though these often come to nothing: “One finds over and over again things commended by various writers that entirely break down when brought to the vital test of actual experiment.”
Like all good cryptanalysts (and historians) Hulme stands at an acutely critical angle to his subject. He puts to the sword a number of seemingly valuable techniques, such as inventing special characters: “If we recognise that a certain form is the symbol of a certain letter, we soon learn to recognise this form when we see it, and its shape is a matter that is absolutely indifferent to us.” He shows us that simple substitution ciphers can be cracked with a bit of patient analysis. The commonest letter in an encrypted message, for example, is very probably “e” in disguise.
Hulme gives short shrift to the substitution cipher created by Elizabethan polymath Francis Bacon (1561–1626), which replaces each letter of the alphabet with five others. He condemns it both for how easy it is to decipher and how long it takes to use. In Bacon’s cipher, the word “cryptogram” resembles a baby's babble:
AAABABAAAABABBAABBBABAABAABBABAABBABAAAAAAAAAABABB
Nevertheless, Hulme praises Bacon’s three essential principles of a good cipher: facility in execution; difficulty in solution; and clearness from suspicion. (He doesn’t bother himself with the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship, which was then at its apogee, after the recent publication of Sir Francis Bacon's Cipher Story (1893–95) by Orville Ward Owen.)
Though they aren’t strictly ciphers, Hulme does have a lot of time for "concealing text". He finds that letters written with the juice of oranges and onions “or almost any sharp things” can be made to appear by the warmth of a fire as if by magic. And letters of vinegar become visible by gently rubbing soot into them. The strangest mode of concealment is also the slowest: “One plan gravely commended was to shave a slave’s head, and then to write upon it any message one might wish to send. When the hair was sufficiently grown to conceal the matter, the man was dispatched to the person with whom it was desired to communicate, and he in turn shaved the victim and read off the message.”
The Greek slave in this story is not the only person who has suffered in the interests of covert communication. Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), the Benedictine monk who wrote the first really elaborate treatise on cryptography, “was accused of dabbling in the black art and holding converse with demons. He was therefore brought to trial for these magical incantations, and had a very narrow escape of being burnt.” Another early modern figure was not so fortunate: “The correspondence of King Charles was captured by the Roundheads at Naseby—a correspondence which Dr. John Wallis, a distinguished mathematician of those days, analysed and finally deciphered, and which ultimately cost the defeated monarch his head.”
The last pages of the book consider various modern ciphers: The grill; revolving grill; slip-card; Mirabeau; Newark; clock-hands; two-word. Hulme was worried that some of his Victorian readers would condemn his book as a facilitator of wrongdoing. Thus at the outset he contends that any powerful science may be co-opted for wicked ends: “From the researches of chemistry may be derived . . . the healing medicine . . . or the subtle potion of the secret poisoner.” And the last line of the book completes his apology. In time of peril, Hulme argues, a knowledge of cryptology “may save hundreds of lives, or avert catastrophe from the nation itself.” If he had lived long enough to know of Alan Turing and the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, he could have upped that figure to millions.
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public-domain-review
|
Feb 14, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:36.099679
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cryptography-or-the-history-principles-and-practice-of-cipher-writing-1898/"
}
|
on-the-banks-of-the-old-raritan-1915
|
On the Banks of the Old Raritan (1915)
Jan 4, 2018
This a 1915 recording of the Peerless Quartet, at the Columbia Studios, performing the alma mater of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (previously Rutgers College and Rutgers University). The original lyrics were hastily penned in 1873 in just two hours by Howard Newton Fuller, an 1874 graduate of Rutgers College, as a school hymn to be performed by the college's Glee Club that very night. The melody of the song is borrowed from a popular Scottish song, "On the Banks of the Old Dundee". According to a later interview with the Rutgers Alumni Monthly, Fuller stated he chose "On the Banks of the Old Dundee" as the song "immediately struck me that the air of that song had the right melody and the stirring and martial swing for an effective college song." An altered version of the song is sung at Rutgers University-Camden commencement ceremonies incorporating the lyrics "on the banks of the old Delaware" and references to Leaves of Grass by the poet Walt Whitman. (Wikipedia)
Lyrics (for this 1915 recording)
I.
My father sent me to old Rutgers,
And resolv'd that I should be a man;
And so I settled down,
In that noisy college town,
On the banks of the old Raritan.
(Chorus)
On the banks of the old Raritan, my boys,
where old Rutgers ever more shall stand,
For has she not stood since the time of the flood,
On the banks of the old Raritan.
II.
Her ardent spirit stirred and cheered me
From the day me college years began;
Gracious Alma Mater mine;
Learning's fair and honored shrine;
On the banks of the old Raritan.
(Chorus)
III.
Then sing aloud to Alma Mater,
And keep the scarlet in the van';
For with her motto high,
Rutgers' name shall never die,
On the banks of the old Raritan.
(Chorus)
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public-domain-review
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Jan 4, 2018
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:36.632373
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/on-the-banks-of-the-old-raritan-1915/"
}
|
|
the-book-of-the-homeless-1916
|
The Book of the Homeless (1916)
Jan 9, 2018
Edith Wharton is best known today for penning such popular novels as The House of Mirth (1905) and her Pulitzer Prize winning The Age of Innocence (1920). A lesser known fact about the eminent American author is the role she played in the war effort during World War I. A frequent traveller to Europe, after her marriage deteriorated she decided to move permanently to France, and when war broke out in 1914 she threw herself headlong into the French war effort, dismayed at the United States' lack of engagement. One of the first causes she undertook was the opening of a workroom for unemployed women, which soon flourished into a thriving sewing business. When the Germans invaded Belgium in the autumn of 1914, Wharton helped to found the American Hostels for Refugees in Paris and later the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which helped to secure fleeing Belgians shelter, meals, clothes, and eventually employment. The following year Wharton used her literary contacts to begin to put together The Book of the Homeless, a compendium of essays, art, poetry, and musical scores whose profits were used to fund civilians displaced by World War I. The roster of contributors is highly impressive — with fifty-seven original works from such high-profile celebrities as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Jean Cocteau, Thomas Hardy, Auguste Rodin, William Butler Yeats, Claude Monet, and Igor Stravinsky. It also boasts an introduction by none other than Theodore Roosevelt in which he praises the efforts of his friend Wharton and urges his fellow Americans to support the war. Wharton also writes a preface in which she describes the process by which the book came to be:
Then the thought of this Book occurred to me. I appealed to my friends who write and paint and compose, and they to other friends of theirs, writers, painters, composers, statesmen and dramatic artists; and so the Book gradually built itself up, page by page and picture by picture. You will see from the names of the builders what a gallant piece of architecture it is, what delightful pictures hang on its walls, and what noble music echoes through them. But what I should have liked to show is the readiness, the kindliness, the eagerness, with which all the collaborators, from first to last, have lent a hand to the building. Perhaps you will guess it for yourselves when you read their names and see the beauty and variety of what they have given. So I efface myself from the threshold and ask you to walk in.
In addition to the 2000 trade copies produced, according to the Huntington Library blog, "a special keepsake edition was printed on French handmade paper in a limited printing of 175 copies, each signed by Updike [the publisher] and housed in a slipcase that also encompasses a portfolio of reproductions of the art works."
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public-domain-review
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Jan 9, 2018
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:37.111071
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-book-of-the-homeless-1916/"
}
|
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a-classical-dictionary-of-the-vulgar-tongue-1788
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A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Jan 18, 2018
Thirty years after Dr Johnson published his great Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Francis Grose put out A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), a compendium of slang Johnson had deemed unfit for his learned tome. Grose was not one for library work. He preferred to do his lexicography in the sordid heart of after-hours London. Supported by his trusty assistant Tom Cocking, he cruised the watering holes of Covent Garden and the East End, eating, boozing, and listening. He took pleasure in hearing his name punningly connected to his rotund frame. And he produced a book brimming with Falstaffian life.
In Vulgar Tongues (2016), Max Décharné called Grose's dictionary, “A declaration in favour of free speech, and a gauntlet thrown down against official censorship, moralists and the easily offended.” While a good deal of the slang has survived into the present day — to screw is to copulate; to kick the bucket is to die — much would likely have been lost had Grose not recorded it. Some of the more obscure metaphors include a butcher’s dog, meaning someone who “lies by the beef without touching it; a simile often applicable to married men”; to box the Jesuit, meaning “to masturbate; a crime, it is said, much practised by the reverend fathers of that society”; and to polish meaning to be in jail, in the sense of “polishing the king’s iron with one’s eyebrows, by looking through the iron grated windows”. Given this was the era of William Hogarth’s famous print Gin Lane (1751), it’s not surprising to find the dictionary soaked through with colourful epithets for the juniper-based liquor: blue ruin, cobblers punch, frog's wine, heart's ease, moonshine, strip me naked. The Grose dictionary also contains hundreds of great insults, like bottle-headed, meaning void of wit, something you can’t say about its author.
Other choice entries include:
Betwattled — to be surprised, confounded, out of one’s senses
Blind cupid — the backside
Bone box — the mouth
Brother of the quill — an author
Cackling farts — eggs< ※※Indexed under…EggSlang for
Captain queernabs — shabby ill-dressed fellow
Chimping merry — exhilarated with liquor
Comfortable importance — a wife
Dicked in the nob — silly, crazed
Dog booby — an awkward lout
Duke of limbs — a tall, awkward, ill-made fellow
Eternity box — a coffin
Head rails — teeth< ※※Indexed under…TeethSlang for
Hickey — tipsy, hiccupping
Irish apricots — potatoes
Jolly nob — the head. “I'll lump your jolly nob for you”: I'll give you a knock on the head.
Knowledge box — another term for the head.
Kittle pitchering — to disrupt the flow of a "troublesome teller of long stories" by constantly questioning and contradicting unimportant details, especially at the start (best done in tandem with others)
Knight of the trenches — a great eater
Just-ass — a punning name for a justice [judge]
Paw paw tricks — forbidden tricks; from the French pas pas
Penny wise and pound foolish — saving in small matters, and extravagant in great
Sugar stick — the virile member
Tallywags / Whirligigs — testicles
Whipt Syllabub — a flimsy, frothy discourse
Whipster — a sharp or subtle fellow
|
public-domain-review
|
Jan 18, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:37.447542
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-classical-dictionary-of-the-vulgar-tongue-1788/"
}
|
the-drolatic-dreams-of-pantagruel-1565
|
The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel (1565)
Text by Adam Green
Mar 15, 2018
In 1565, twelve years after the death of François Rabelais (1494-1553) — the French Renaissance author best known for his satirical masterpiece The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, the bawdy tale of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel — the Parisian bookseller and publisher Richard Breton brought out Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (The drolatic dreams of Pantagruel). The slim volume, save a short preface from Breton, is made up entirely of images — 120 woodcuts depicting a series of fantastically bizarre and grotesque figures, reminiscent of some of the more inventive and twisted creations of Brueghel or Bosch.
"The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais," Breton writes in the preface, "has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent and wonderful Patagruel". Despite the claims (echoed too in the book's subtitle), the book's wonderful images are very unlikely to be the work of Rabelais himself — the attribution probably a clever marketing ploy by Breton. Indeed, that this attribution to Rabelais is a ruse might also explain the unusual lack of text beyond the preface, the intimidating task of imitating the comic master's distinctive literary style perhaps one step too far for Breton. The creator of the prints is now widely thought to be François Desprez, a French engraver and illustrator behind two other sets of imaginative designs, similar in style — Recueil de la diuersité des habits (A Collection of Diverse Costumes) and Recueil des effigies des roys de France (A Collection of Pictures of the Kings of France) — both published through Breton in 1567.
The highlights we present below are from an 1869 reproduction printed by Louis Perrin of Lyon, which includes a new and extensive introduction offering some ideas on the symbolism of the figures (mockery of Pope Julius II is rife). You can see the 1565 original here on BnF's Gallica platform (but be aware it has restrictions on re-use, hence why we are not featuring the images here). For more on the book and its images we recommend reading the excellent post featured on the Poemas del río Wang blog, which, among other illuminating insights, also includes an English translation of Breton's preface and ruminations upon the adjective "drolatique". As for an English translation of Rabelais' The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel we recommend M. A. Screech's 2006 translation for Penguin Classics.
|
public-domain-review
|
Mar 15, 2018
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:37.950378
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-drolatic-dreams-of-pantagruel-1565/"
}
|
kittens-and-cats-a-first-reader-1911-cats-and-captions-before-the-internet-age
|
Kittens and Cats: A First Reader (1911) — Cats and Captions before the Internet Age
Text by Adam Green
Dec 6, 2017
Before LOLCat, Grumpy Cat, Longcat, Nyan Cat, before all the famed kitties of the internet age, before the modern computer was but a glint in Mother Turing's eye, there were the felines featured in Kittens and Cats: A First Reader (1911). If this delightful, yet also slightly creepy, book is anything to go by then taking photos of cats and brandishing them with an amusing caption was far from being a phenomenon born with the internet. Within its pages we meet "Queen Cat", "Dunce Cat", "Party Cat", and perhaps our favourite "Hero Cat", amongst others. The book is attributed to the American children's author Eulalie Osgood Grover, who weaves about the pictures the tale of the Queen's party and all the kitty characters attending. As for the photographs themselves, the book states them to be courtesy of the Rotograph Company, a popular postcard manufacturers, which implies they are almost certainly an early example of the work of Harry Whittier Frees, their staff animal photographer. A few years later Frees would become associated with a whole host of similar pictures under his own name, with the publication in 1915 of his The Little Folks of Animal Land, which was followed by the publication of a number of further such collections until he ended his own life in 1953. How did Frees get his cats to pose for such photographs, even more remarkable before the days of super quick shutter speeds? Although he denied the use of dead or taxidermied animals, and insisted only humane methods were used, one can't help but wonder if this is really true, especially in the case of his later work which involved more elaborate tableaus than displayed in this book.
|
public-domain-review
|
Dec 6, 2017
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:38.437551
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/kittens-and-cats-a-first-reader-1911-cats-and-captions-before-the-internet-age/"
}
|
napoleons-englich-lessons
|
Napoleon’s “Englich” Lessons
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Mar 14, 2018
Napoleon had had a rollercoaster eighteen months. First he had been forced to abdicate as Emperor of France and exiled to the island of Elba. Then he had managed to escape, march on Paris, and retake the throne. Finally a crushing loss at Waterloo had led to exile once again, this time to a far more remote island called Saint Helena. The watery walls of his new South Atlantic prison were at least a thousand miles thick in every direction.
The British had agreed to provide Le Petit Caporal with plentiful wine, meat, and musical instruments, but he could not have what he most craved — family, power, Europe. To make matters worse, he had virtually nothing to read. Newspapers were banned, and those he did manage to get his hands on were nearly all in English. That was the main reason why, on January 16, 1816, three months after landing on the island, he decided to learn the language of his captors. For the following three months he studied nearly every afternoon. The daily labour produced a mixed bag of verbal fruit; a sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet taste of his time on the island where he would end his days, six years later, aged 51.
Far more than rote learning conjugations, declensions, and articles, Napoleon enjoyed scribbling his thoughts in French and then translating them into English. The results were often wistful:
When will you be wiseNever as long as j should be in this isleBut j shall become wise after having passed the lineWhen j shall land in France j shall be very content…
My wife shall come near to me, my son shall be great and strong if he will be able to trink a bottle of wine at dinner j shall [toast] with him… / The women believe they [are] ever prety / The time has not wings / When you shall come, you shall see that j have ever loved you.
His English teacher was Count Emmanuel de Las Cases, an historian and loyal supporter who had been allowed to voyage with him to Saint Helena. The Count would later turn their fifteen months of conversations into a publishing sensation, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1822–23). The book recorded Napoleon’s day-to-day life on the island, his sentiments on religion and philosophy, his argument that the ideals of the French Revolution had lived on in the empire. It would be printed and reprinted throughout the century, and do much to turn the perception of Napoleon from a dictator into a liberator — a slayer of tyrannical dynasties more than a founder of his own. It is also the primary window through which we can view the development of Napoleon’s English.
According to Count Las Cases, his pupil “had an extraordinary intelligence but a very bad memory: this latter particularly upset him.” As a result, Napoleon grasped English grammar with an impressive ease but vocabulary with a painful slowness.
When it came to speaking English, the Count relates, “The pupil wished only to recognise [French] pronunciation.” Perhaps the former emperor could not bear to do his vanquishers the honour of speaking their language their way. Perhaps his approach to English mirrored his general approach to foreign territory — he liked to make it his own:
Even in his own language, [he] had a way of garbling proper nouns; as for foreign words, he pronounced them just as he pleased. Once they left his mouth, whatever way he had pronounced them, they remained forever that, because he had, once and for all, lodged them in his head in that way.
Out of this situation arose a completely new language, Las Cases tells us, only comprehensible to pupil and teacher. Betsy Balcomb, a teenaged resident of the island, agreed: “The Emperor’s English, of which he spoke a few words, was the oddest in the world.” But Napoleon stuck at his language-learning. Las Cases suggests that he devoted up to five hours every afternoon to it, “sometimes with an application that was entirely admirable, sometimes with visible dislike.” Through this effort he achieved his goal of reading the newspapers. And he “could, more or less, have made himself understood in writing.”
We can judge that last claim for ourselves. Because Napoleon was an insomniac, he used to write English letters in the middle of the night, for Las Cases to correct the next day. In one that survives, dated 7 March, 1816, Napoleon calculates how far he has come towards proficiency and how much work he has left to get there:
Count lascases — Since sixt week j learn the Englich and j do not any progress. Six week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivity word four day I could know it two thusands and two hundred. It is in the dictionary more of fourty thousand; even he could must twinty bout much of tems for know it our hundred and twenty week, which do more two yars. After this you shall agrée that to study one tongue is a great labour who it must do into the young aged.
Comprehensible? Maybe. Idiosyncratic? Certainly. Napoleon never stopped insisting on writing “j” (as in the French “je”) instead of “I”. Nonetheless his writerly confidence was growing. That same month he even played a joke on Las Cases in English. He anonymously sent to his teacher a review of one of his books, declaring it to be not without “somme fautes but you schal may corect them in the next edition.” Las Cases tells us (semi-plausibly) that he was completely taken in by his pupil's fraudulent review. And upon seeing the surprise and anger of his teacher, Napoleon began "splitting his sides laughing". But the teacher’s supposed anger soon softened: “I kept this letter safe: the happiness, the style and the circumstances make it more precious than any diploma which the Emperor could have given at the time of his power.” ※※Indexed under…Jokesby notable figures
Las Cases last mentions Napoleon’s English on April 15, 1816, when he had been studying the language for three months. His confidence had now improved to the point where over dinner he felt comfortable giving an impromptu summary, in English, of a story he had read in an illicitly obtained French newspaper, “full of curious, remarkable, romantic details, which greatly aroused our interest.” Napoleon so enjoyed the reaction of his audience that he began to laugh, “for his story had been but that, improvised so as to show us his progress in English, so he said.”
If you’d like to know more about Napoleon’s English lessons, Peter Hicks has written an excellent piece for Napoleon.org, which our account above draws on. For more on the emperor’s final exile, have a read of the last chapter of Andrew Roberts’ Napoleon the Great (2014). Or have a look at our Collections piece on Napoleon at St Helena (1855), a book derived from several firsthand accounts, including the one by Las Cases.
|
public-domain-review
|
Mar 14, 2018
|
Ned Pennant-Rea
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:38.886214
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/napoleons-englich-lessons/"
}
|
the-dances-of-the-ages-1913
|
The Dances of the Ages (1913)
Feb 2, 2018
This delightful short from Edison Manufacturing Co. features the dancers Norma Gould and Ted Shawn (with troupe in tow) performing a range of "historical" dances, not upon the stage but, via the magic of special effects, miniaturised upon a banqueting table top. Flanking either side of the table-sized stage are a bevy of beer drinking men — one of whom is meant to be an old dancing master — making merry to the beat of the dances before them.
In order of appearance:
Stone Age. Dance of Primitive Man
Egypt 1200 BC. Dance of the Priest of Ra
Greece 400 BC. The Bacchanalia
Orient 200 AD
England 1760. The Minuet
France 1850. The Carnival
America 1898. The Cakewalk
America 1913. Ragtime
Despite its look back through the ages (and being made more than a century ago) there is something oddly futuristic about the scene, as though at once also an accidental window into the future advances in holography. This special effect of miniaturisation, whereby some actors appear in miniature while others are normally sized, was a popular technique of early cinema (see also Princess Nicotine from 1909, and The Cheese Mites from 1901).
The short presented here is one of few dance-related films appearing on a compilation of footage belonging to the Denishawn Video Archive at the New York Public Library. Founded in 1915, the L.A.-based Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, was the brainchild of dancers (and married couple) Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company.
|
public-domain-review
|
Feb 2, 2018
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:39.365777
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-dances-of-the-ages-1913/"
}
|
|
diagrams-from-dr-alesha-sivartha-s-book-of-life-1898
|
Diagrams from Dr Alesha Sivartha’s Book of Life (1898)
Text by Adam Green
Nov 15, 2017
Titled The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man, Dr Alesha Sivartha’s enigmatic 1898 work expounds his unique blend of blend of science, sociology, mysticism and religion, a spiritual teaching which apparently attracted the attention of Mark Twain among others. Sivartha was clearly a man bursting at the seams with an abundance of complex and esoteric ideas, and while in written form this might translate into somewhat dense and bamboozling prose, visually it gave birth to a series of superbly intricate and striking diagrams. Obsessed with the magical properties of the number 12, Sivartha, in each of his wonderful "brain maps”, breaks down the grey matter into twelve different sections, as well as turning his gaze to other parts of the body such as hands and the nervous system as a whole. The ideas these curious images express are difficult to sum up succinctly but broadly touch on the main tenants of theosophy. In the words of Sivartha himself:
The human race has been marching upward from the first ages of history. Under what law has that mighty procession of the ages taken place? Science and history both answer that man has advanced, step by step, from the ignorant and selfish rule of his lower brain organs uptoward the beneficent dominion of his higher faculties. The laws which have controlled that vast upward movement are still in force. They are fixed in the very constitution of man. And they are of supreme importance at the present time, for they determine what new institutions and what social changes are now required to meet that higher growth of man.
As for the author himself, not a lot is known for certain, other than Sivartha appears to be the pen-name for a Kansas doctor named Arthur E. Merton (1834?-1915?), who is listed as the author of an earlier 1876 version of The Book of Life. What little additional information out there seems to stem mainly from a website (which seems to share the same mesmerising sense of horror vacui as its subject!) run by his great-great grandson, which claims Sivartha/Merton to be the illegitimate son of the Indian scholar and activist Raja Ram Mohun Roy Bahadoor and an unknown English Unitarian woman who became romantically embroiled with the Raja during his tour of England.
|
public-domain-review
|
Nov 15, 2017
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:39.804295
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/diagrams-from-dr-alesha-sivartha-s-book-of-life-1898/"
}
|
russian-portraits-1921
|
Russian Portraits (1921)
Text by Ned Pennant-Rea
Feb 8, 2018
Clare Sheridan was an English sculptor and writer with friends in rare places. One such friend was Lev Kamenev, an original member of the Soviet Union's Politburo, whom Sheridan met in 1920 when Kamenev visited London as part of the first Soviet trade delegation to the city. Sheridan had modelled a bust of him and shown him around. She later wrote of their time together on Hampstead Heath: “We went on foot off a side road on to a rough sandy track, quite away from people and lights. On a bank I spread my white fur coat, and we sat there for an hour or more. It was very beautiful.”
Sheridan had not found her passion for sculpture until 1914, when she was 29. Grief stricken by the death of her infant daughter, she had modelled an angel to watch over the grave. The work was a solace. When her husband died on the Western Front the following year, Sheridan took a small studio in London and devoted herself to learning sculpture. Her first London exhibition was a great success and led to commissions from figures including HG Wells, Herbert Asquith, and Winston Churchill. The latter was in fact her first cousin. The pair were close. But when Sheridan had told Winston of her literary ambitions he had been worse than patronising. “Better” he wrote “to please and inspire the male sex.” Sheridan ignored him. Her career as a sculptor and journalist would eventually yield sixteen books.
By the time she met Kamenev in London, she was an established artist of independent means, but she had never been published. When Kamenev personally invited her to travel back with him to Russia to make busts of his fellow revolutionaries she seemed to jump at the chance. Perhaps she smelt a great story. Certainly she wanted adventure and to know the truth about the Bolsheviks — “these wild beasts who have been represented as ready to spring upon us and devour us!” Kamenev managed to secure her passage to Moscow, getting her a berth on the trade delegation’s boat to Stockholm, and from there the Estonian visa she needed to reach Russia. She would stay at the Kremlin for two months, producing excellent models of Trotsky, Lenin, and other Soviet bigwigs.
On leaving she turned her diaries into Russian Portraits (1921), a book which proved controversial on account of it humanising those “wild beasts” of the Kremlin. Part of the scandal was familial. Churchill was Secretary of State for War and had spent the last year pushing hard for the allies to fight against the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. Sheridan alluded to the controversy in her foreword:
There are people in England who are indignant at my doing Lenin and Trotsky. There were people in Moscow who were horrified because I had done Churchill . . . but as a portraitist I have nothing to do with politics; it is humanity that interests me, humanity with its force and its weakness, its ambitions and fears, its honesty and lack of scruples, its perfection and deformities.
In fact, Sheridan was deeply interested in politics. While at the Kremlin she had extensive conversations with the Soviets on their aims, legislation, and secret organisations. Nonetheless the book focuses predominantly on characterisation — distinctive features, juicy human details. She writes of Trotsky:
When he talks his face lights up and his eyes flash . . . Suddenly I had the thought of asking him to undo his collar for me. He unbuttoned his tunic and the shirt underneath, and laid bare a splendid neck and chest. I worked like a fury for half an hour which was all too short. I tried to convey into my clay some of his energy and vitality.
And of Lenin:
Never did I see anyone make so many faces. Lenin laughed and frowned, and looked thoughtful, sad, and humorous all in turn. His eyebrows twitched, sometimes they went right up, and then again they puckered together maliciously. I watched these expressions, waited, hesitated, and then made my selection with a frantic rush—it was his screwed-up look. Wonderful! No one else has such a look, it is his alone.
When she returned from Moscow, London society (including Winston) cold-shouldered her. So she crossed the Atlantic, to travel in the United States and Mexico. She spent some days with Charlie Chaplin and created a bust of him — the papers would go onto report widely rumours of an affair. From there her life produced many more twists, turns, and travel books including Across Europe with Satanella [the name of her motorbike] (1925), A Turkish Kaleidoscope (1926) and Arab Interlude (1936). She died in 1970, and was buried beside Brede church in Sussex, south east England, where stands a memorial she carved out of a massive oak tree, for her son Dickie who had succumbed to appendicitis aged twenty-one, while travelling with her in Constantinople.
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public-domain-review
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Feb 8, 2018
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Ned Pennant-Rea
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:40.325044
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/russian-portraits-1921/"
}
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details-from-gustav-klimt-s-the-kiss-1908
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Details from Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1908)
Feb 6, 2018
100 years ago today, on 6th February 1918, the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt passed away in Vienna after having suffered a stroke and pneumonia, one of the many millions of victims of the worldwide influenza epidemic that year. He left a rich body of artistic output that established him as one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement, and, today, as among the most well known artists in the history of art. His better known works hail from what is known as his "golden phase" — which saw him finally win favour with the critics (and also his bank manager). The period was so-called because of Klimt's frequent use in these years of gold-leaf in his compositions: and of these works perhaps none is more famous than The Kiss. Painted between 1907 and 1908, upon a perfectly square canvas (180 × 180 cm), the work depicts a couple locked in intimate embrace, their clothes and surrounding landscape exquisitely rendered in two dimensional pattern: the man in a smock of rectilinear shapes, the woman in a dress of softer floral forms, behind them a swathe of textured gold, and beneath a bed of colourful flowers. To celebrate the centenary of his death, we give to you a selection of close-ups from the painting.
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public-domain-review
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Feb 6, 2018
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:40.778307
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"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/details-from-gustav-klimt-s-the-kiss-1908/"
}
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engravings-from-oliver-goldsmith-s-history-of-the-earth-and-animated-nature-1825
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Engravings from Oliver Goldsmith’s History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1825)
Dec 27, 2012
"Beautiful and appropriate" engravings for Oliver Goldsmith's History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1825). Goldsmith (1730-1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, his pastoral poem The Deserted Village, and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer. He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes". Along with Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson he was a founding member of "The Club" in 1764, a London dining club who would meet weekly bringing together the leading lights of the city's artist and literary scene.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 27, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:41.775369
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"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/engravings-from-oliver-goldsmith-s-history-of-the-earth-and-animated-nature-1825/"
}
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scientific-amusements-1890
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Scientific Amusements (1890)
Nov 26, 2012
Harry Houdini's copy of Scientific Amusements left by his estate to the Library of Congress in 1927. From the Preface:
Young people of both sexes, and persons of all ages who have leisure and a taste for that which is ingenious as well as instructive and amusing, may be commended to this remarkably interesting collection of experiments, nearly all of which can be readily performed by an unskilled person who will carefully follow out the directions given. It is surprising how near we are to the most fundamental principles of science when we perform some of the simplest operations.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 26, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:42.252294
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scientific-amusements-1890/"
}
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snowflakes-a-chapter-from-the-book-of-nature-1863
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Snowflakes: A Chapter From the Book of Nature (1863)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Dec 4, 2012
Snowflakes were not always emblematic of the unique. Israel Perkins Warren, a prominent American minister and author of Snowflakes: A Chapter from the Book of Nature (1863), offers a brief history of efforts to typologize frozen water crystals. In 1755, John Nettis published an account of his experiments, begun fifteen years prior, to observe “the wonderful Configurations of the smallest shining Particles of Snow”. He saw ninety-one varieties, many of which this “Oculist to the Republic of Middleburg” illustrated with needles and columns that resemble delicate leaves. In his 1820 Account of the Arctic Regions, Captain William Scoresby arrived on ninety-six varieties, which are diagrammed with lacey opacity on plates bookended by nautical charts and narwhals. Warren copies his own designs from these predecessors as well as the images of Cecilia Glaisher, one of the first women photographers, whose formal interest in ferns harmonized, perhaps, with her illustrations for explorations of snowflakes written by her husband. Unlike these other texts, Warren’s Snowflakes does not typologize, but instead serves chiefly to introduce “this interesting department of the Creator’s works” and elicit “those sentiments of admiration and reverence which his wonder-working power should inspire in every beholder”. The “treasures of the snow”, writes Warren, “are open to all who choose to explore them”.
Snowflakes begins with a short chapter on “snow structure”, the scientific pretense of which melts before the reader’s eyes. “Much attention has been given to the meteorological conditions of the atmosphere during the fall of snow”, Warren reports; “Nothing very definite, however, is discoverable in this respect.” The same applies to causal arguments about the marvelous geometry of flakes. “Of the hidden causes which originate these beautiful productions, nothing whatever is known. . . . even if [magnetic or electrical] theories were demonstrated, they would explain nothing.” There is no need for further understanding because the First Cause is clear:
Snow is formed in the higher regions of our atmosphere. It is the wild, raging water of the ocean, the gentle rill of the mountains, the beautiful lake, and the vilest pond on earth, all taxed and made to contribute at the bidding of their Lord to this department of his treasure-house. They send up their tribute in the finest particles of moisture ; the steady contribution coming up from all parts of the globe indiscriminately.
And yet, from the extracts of poetry and devotional prose that follow — including works by Eliza Cook, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia H. Scott, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hannah Flagg Gould, and dozens of other writers — rapturous theories of snowfall emerge. Organized thematically (“Purity”, “Grace”, “Beauty”, “Weakness”, etc.), Snowflakes posits, to take just one example, that water freezes along “the angle of sixty degrees*,* or some multiple of it” because flakes are like flocks: “the fleecy crystals, through spreading abroad each in its utmost individual liberty, being still retained within one ownership and belonging to one fold”.
In the early twentieth-century, Wilson Bentley’s microscopic photographs of snowflakes would popularize the idea that no two ice crystals are alike. Warren’s beautifully-illuminated volume, in its resistance to dissection, inadvertently swung closer to the present-day consensus. In 2013, researchers in Japan divided snowflakes into thirty-nine categories, further divisible by 121 subtypes. Flakes are indeed, it seems, of a flock.
Below you can browse a complete collection of the plates from Snowflakes.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 4, 2012
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Hunter Dukes
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:42.694175
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/snowflakes-a-chapter-from-the-book-of-nature-1863/"
}
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scrooge-or-marley-s-ghost-1901
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Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901)
Dec 10, 2012
Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost, directed by Walter R. Booth, is the oldest known film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novel A Christmas Carol - featuring the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge confronted by Marley's ghost and given by visions of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The film, "although somewhat flat and stage-bound to modern eyes," according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "was an ambitious undertaking at the time," as, "not only did it attempt to tell an 80 page story in five minutes, but it featured impressive trick effects, superimposing Marley's face over the door knocker and the scenes from his youth over a black curtain in Scrooge's bedroom." It was presented in 'Twelve Tableaux' or scenes and is thought to contain the first ever use of intertitles in a film. (Wikipedia)
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public-domain-review
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Dec 10, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:43.182280
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/scrooge-or-marley-s-ghost-1901/"
}
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prison-diary-of-michael-dougherty-1908
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Prison diary of Michael Dougherty (1908)
Dec 6, 2012
The diary of Michael Dougherty, a young Irish soldier in the American Civil War, kept while imprisoned in various Confederate prison camps. As Dougherty notes, in 1863 “At 5 p.m. we were overpowered, cut off from the division and 127 of our regiment, among whom was your humble servant, were compelled to surrender.” For the next 23 months moving from camp to camp Dougherty kept his secret diary noting down his experiences of daily life. Of the 127 Union soldiers taken prisoner with him, he was the sole survivor, with nearly all of them perishing at the hands of commander Captain Wirz in the notorious Andersonville, Georgia prison. Dougherty's descriptions of the appalling conditions at Andersonville are amongst the most harrowing in the book.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 6, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:43.677358
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/prison-diary-of-michael-dougherty-1908/"
}
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class-of-2013
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Class of 2013
Dec 11, 2012
Pictured above is our top pick of artists and writers whose works will, on 1st January 2013, be entering the public domain in those countries with a 'life plus 70 years' copyright term (e.g. most European Union members, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, etc.). An eclectic bunch have assembled for our graduation photo - including the two founding fathers of anthropology from different sides of the Atlantic, an Army officer turned "premature hippy", the painter of one of America's most iconic images, and a canonised Catholic saint who studied with Martin Heidegger. The unifying factor bringing them all together is that all died in the year of 1942, many sadly as a result, directly or indirectly, of the Second World War.
Below is a little bit more about each of their lives (with each name linking through to their respective Wikipedia pages, if you would like to find out more). In the new year, when their works shall enter the public domain, links to works shall be included as well.
BRUNO SCHULZ
Bruno Schulz (July 12th 1892 – November 19th 1942) was a Polish writer and artist most famous for his collection of short stories The Street of Crocodiles (1934) which centre on a merchant family from a small town in the Galician region. The book, with its inventive and unique use of metaphor, helped establish Schulz's reputation as one of the great Polish-language writers of the 20th century. He led a relatvively solitary life, teaching drawing in a Polish school in his hometown of Drohobych from 1924 to 1941. Following the Nazi invasion during the Second World War, being Jewish, Schulz was forced to live in a ghetto but for a while was protected by a Nazi Gestapo officer named Felix Landau who was an admirer of his artwork. During the last weeks of his life, Schulz painted a mural in Landau's home in Drohobych. Shortly after completing the work, Schulz was walking home through the "Aryan quarter" with a loaf of bread when he was shot and killed by another Gestapo officer, Karl Günther, a rival of Landau's. Subsequently, Schulz's mural was painted over and forgotten until its discovery by a German documentary film crew in 2001. At the time of his death Schulz was working on a novel called The Messiah which has subsequently been lost.
ROBERT MUSIL
Robert Musil (November 6th 1880 – April 15th 1942) was an Austrian writer whose huge tome of an unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels. The story, set in Vienna on the eve of World War 1, deals with the moral and intellectual decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire through the eyes of the book's hero Ulrich, a former mathematician who has failed to engage with the world around him in such a manner that would allow him to possess 'qualities'. In 1932 Musil's contemporary Thomas Mann (who had set up the Robert Musil Society that same year), when asked to name an eminent contemporary novel, cited exclusively The Man Without Qualities. Despite this support from high literary circles Musil's work was far from gaining mass popular appeal in his lifetime. Indeed after his death from a stroke in 1942, incurred while he was on the run from the Nazis with his Jewish wife Martha, his work was largely forgotten in the German speaking world and it was not until the 1950s that it began to garner attention once more. The first translation of The Man Without Qualities in English was published in 1953, 1954 and 1960 - with an updated translation, included previously unpublished drafts, was published in 1995. More recently the philosophical aspect of his writing has come under the spotlight with the philosophy journal The Monist seeking submissions for a special issue on "The Philosophy of Robert Musil" to be published in January 2014.
FRANZ BOAS
Franz Boas (July 9th 1858 – December 21st 1942) was a German-American pioneer of modern anthropology and has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". With his emphasis on research first, followed later by generalizations, a methodology patterned after the natural sciences, Boas went against the British school of "armchair anthropologists" who tended to only do fieldwork to prove or disprove grand generalisations already made. In the early 20th century he would establish anthropology as a discipline in its own right, one orientated around two basic questions: "Why are the tribes and nations of the world different, and how have the present differences developed?" He was pivotal in moving the study of cultures away from racist assumptions surrounding forming a hierarchy of "civilizations" toward a more relativistic approach. In his 1963 book, Race: The History of an Idea in America, Thomas Gossett wrote that "It is possible that Boas did more to combat race prejudice than any other person in history." He died of a stroke at the Columbia University Faculty Club on December 21, 1942 in the arms of fellow anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
BRONISLAW MALINOWKSI
Bronisław Malinowski (April 7th 1884 – 16 May 1942), a Polish born British-naturalised citizen, was one of the most important anthropologists of the 20th-century. In 1910, at the age of 26 he moved to England to study exchange and economics at the London School of Economics, analysing patterns of exchange in aboriginal Australia through ethnographic documents. In 1914 he made an expedition to the South Pacific region but was forbidden to return to England as, after the outbreak of WW1, he was considered an enemy of the British commonwealth. The Australian government did, however, allow him to study the locals in Melanesia where he conducted research on the Trobriand people of Papua - the foundations for his groundbreaking ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific which he would write in after his return to England following the end of the war. Finally published in 1922 the work which established him as one of the most important anthropologists in Europe of that time. The ethnography described the complex institution of the Kula ring, and became foundational for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange. Like his American counterpart Franz Boas, Malinowksi is credited with being the first to bring anthropology "off the verandah", that is, experiencing the everyday life of his subjects along with them. Malinowski emphasized the importance of detailed participant observation and argued that anthropologists must have daily contact with their informants if they are to adequately record the "imponderabilia of everyday life" that are so important to understanding a different culture. He emphasised that the goal of the anthropologist, or ethnographer, is "to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world".
GRANT WOOD
Grant Wood (February 13th 1891 – February 12th 1942) was an American painter from Iowa best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. His most famous work is American Gothic, considered by many to be one of the iconic images of the 20th century. The painting depicts a stern but calm man holding a pitchfork (modelled by Wood's dentist) and a younger woman, the man's spinster daughter (modelled by Wood's sister), stood in front of an unusual house - the classic wooden American farmhouse but with an arch-shaped window reminiscent of a more European Gothic architecture. The painting became popular after it won third prize at big competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the guise of many different interpretations the painting went on to capture the imagination of the American public, at the time going through the Great Depression.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Stefan Zweig (November 28th 1881 – February 22th 1942) was an Austrian writer who at the height of his literary career in the 1920s and 30s could lay claim to being one the most famous writers in the world - extremely popular in the USA, South America and Europe, though not so much in Britain. He mixed with the intelligentsia of his time, befriending Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, and being a particular favourite of the composer Richard Strauss, for he who's The Silent Woman he wrote the libretto. Zweig's style as a writer was simple and easy - his plaudits emphasising its humanity and grace, his critics (mostly in Britain) seeing it as effected and pedestrian. He is best known for his novellas such as, The Royal Game, Amok, Letter from an Unknown Woman); his novels such as, Beware of Pity, Confusion of Feelings, and the posthumously published The Post Office Girl and his biographies, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan, Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and also posthumously published, Balzac. Being Jewish he spent the 30s in exile from the encroachment of the Nazi regime, first to England and then in 1940 to America, a flight which he recounts in his autobiographical The World of Yesterday. On February 23rd 1942 he and his wife were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the Brazilian city of Petrópolis, holding hands. In despair over the destruction of his beloved Europe he and his wife had taken their own lives. In a suicide note he wrote: "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth. I send greetings to all of my friends: May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them."
EDITH STEIN
Edith Stein (October 12th 1891 – August 9th 1942) - also known as Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, informally also known as Saint Edith Stein - was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She was born into an observant Jewish family but by her teenage years was an atheist. At the age of 24, after receiving a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Göttingen with a dissertation under Edmund Husserl, On the Problem of Empathy, she worked as an assistant to Husserl alongside a certain Martin Heidegger. During her summer holidays in Bergzabern in 1921 Stein read the autobiography of the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila and she was subsequently converted to Roman Catholicsm. She became baptised in 1922 and gave up her assistantship with Husserl to teach at the Dominican nuns' schools school in Speyer from 1923 to 1931. While there, she translated Thomas Aquinas' De Veritate. In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster, but antisemitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933. She went to a monastery in Cologne where she wrote Finite and Eternal Being which tries to combine the philosophies of Aquinas and Husserl. To avoid the growing Nazi threat she was transferred to the Netherlands where she wrote The Science of the Cross: Studies on John of the Cross. In 1942, following a new decree to round up all previously spared converts from Judaism, Stein and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were captured and shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp where they are presumed to have been gassed on August 9th 1942.
A.E.WAITE
Arthur Edward Waite (October 2nd 1857 – May 19th 1942) was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and co-created the widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck. He was a prolific author with many of his works being well received in academic circles. He wrote occult texts on subjects including divination, esotericism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and ceremonial magic, Kabbalism and alchemy; he also translated and reissued several important mystical and alchemical works. A number of his volumes remain in print, The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911), The Holy Kabbalah (1929), A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1921), and his edited translation of Eliphas Levi's Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual (1896). Waite is perhaps best known as the co-creator of the popular and widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume, the Key to the Tarot, republished in expanded form the following year, 1911, as the Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a guide to Tarot reading.
FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND
Sir Francis Younghusband (May 31st 1863 – July 31st 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered chiefly for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, which he led, during which a massacre of Tibetans occurred. It was on the retreat from this disastrous mission while in the moutains that he had a mystical revelation which suffused him with "love for the whole world" and convinced him that "men at heart are divine." This conviction led him to regret his invasion of Tibet, and eventually, in 1936, to found the World Congress of Faiths (in imitation of the World Parliament of Religions). He went on to pen a number of fantasictally titled books including Mother World (in Travail for the Christ that is to be) (1924), and Life in the Stars: An Exposition of the View that on some Planets of some Stars exist Beings higher than Ourselves, and on one a World-Leader, the Supreme Embodiment of the Eternal Spirit which animates the Whole (1927). This last was particularly admired by Lord Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts founder. Key concepts include what would come to be known as the Gaia hypothesis, pantheism, and a Christlike "world leader" living on the planet "Altair" (or "Stellair"), who radiates spiritual guidance by means of telepathy. Younghusband also played a key role in the first ascent of Mount Everest, being elected President of the Royal Geographical Society in 1919, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee which was set up to coordinate the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest.
ERIC RAVILIOUS
Eric Ravilious (July 22nd 1903 – September 2nd 1942) was an English artist from the county of Sussex reknowned for his watercolours of the South Downs. Apart from a brief experimentation with oils in 1930 – inspired by the works of Johan Zoffany – Ravilious painted almost entirely in watercolour. He was especially inspired by the landscape of the South Downs around Beddingham. He frequently returned to Furlongs, the cottage of Peggy Angus, where some of his most famous works were carried out, such as Tea at Furlongs. As well as watercolours, Ravillous engraved more than four hundred illustrations and drew over forty lithographic designs for books and publications during his lifetime for large publishing houses such as Jonathan Cape, Lanston Corporation and smaller, less commercial publishers, such as the Golden Cockerel Press, the Curwen Press and the Cresset Press. His woodcut of two Victorian gentlemen playing cricket has appeared on the front cover of every edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since 1938. In 1936 Ravilious was invited by Wedgwood to make designs for ceramics. His work for them included a commemorative mug to mark the coronation of Edward VIII, the "Boat Race" bowl and the "Garden" series of plates, in which each size of plate showed a diffferent plant. In 1940 Ravilious was appointed an official war artist, with the rank of Honorary Captain in the Royal Marines. During that year he painted at the Royal Naval Barracks at Chatham and Sheerness; sailed to Norway and the Arctic on board HMS Highlander, which was carrying out escort duties, and painted submarines at Gosport and coastal defences at Newlyn. In August of 1942 he was transferred to Iceland, where he was killed accompanying a Royal Air Force air sea rescue mission that failed to return to its base.
L.M. MONTGOMERY
Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30th 1874 – April 24th 1942), called "Maud" by family and friends and publicly known as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. The central character, Anne, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following. Mark Twain said Montgomery’s Anne was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice". She went on to publish 20 novels (8 of which were in the Anne of Green Gables series) as well as more than 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a book of poetry. She was honoured by being the first female in Canada to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England and by being invested in the Order of the British Empire in 1935. After struggling with looking after her mentally ill husband for many years in their home "Journey's End" in Ontario, she died in 1942 in a suspected suicide.
And a few others that didn't make it to the class photo....
Flinders-Petrie
Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (Xavier Mayne)
Dorothy Wall
Charles Henry Chomley
Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon
Violet Hunt
Ernest Bramah
Roberto Arlt
Walter Sickert
To learn more about Public Domain Day visit publicdomainday.org. Here you can discover what celebratory events might be planned in your area and peruse an in-progress 'public domain in 2013' list.
For more names whose works will be going into the public domain in 2013 see the Wikipedia page on 1942 deaths and also a list being compiled here. Adrian Pohl has also put together this excellent list.
We also came across this great public domain advent calendar project (in French).
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public-domain-review
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Dec 11, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:44.155866
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/class-of-2013/"
}
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a-christmas-sermon-by-robert-louis-stevenson-1900
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A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson (1900)
Dec 21, 2012
A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson written while he convalesced from a lung ailment at Lake Sarnac in the winter of 1887. In the short text he meditates on the questions of death, morality and man's main task in life which he concludes is “To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence.” The piece was to be published in Scribner’s magazine the following December. This pamphlet edition is from 1900, published 6 years after Stevenson's death at the age of just 44.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 21, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:44.805184
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-christmas-sermon-by-robert-louis-stevenson-1900/"
}
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the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Dec 21, 2012
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described by John of Patmos in his Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. The chapter tells of a "'book', or 'scroll', in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals". The Lamb of God, or Lion of Judah, (Jesus Christ) opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons forth four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and pale horses. Although some interpretations differ, in most accounts, the four riders are seen as symbolizing Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, respectively. The Christian apocalyptic vision is that the four horsemen are to set a divine apocalypse upon the world as harbingers of the Last Judgment.
The White Horse
I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. (Revelation 6:1-2)
The Red Horse
When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come and see!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. (Revelation 6:3-4)
The Black Horse
When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!" (Revelation 6:5-6)
The Pale Horse
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:7-8)
Wikipedia
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public-domain-review
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Dec 21, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:45.228168
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse/"
}
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plates-from-a-history-of-the-carriby-islands-1666
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Plates from a History of the Carriby Islands (1666)
Nov 30, 2012
The 9 illustrative plates from The History of the Caribby-Islands: viz. Barbados, St Christophers, St Vincents, Martinico, Dominico, Barbouthos, Monserrat, Mevis, Antego, &c. in all XXVIII (1666), by Charles de Rochefort and translated by John Davies.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 30, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:45.694062
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/plates-from-a-history-of-the-carriby-islands-1666/"
}
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examples-of-chinese-ornament-1867
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Owen Jones’ Examples of Chinese Ornament (1867)
Text by Hunter Dukes
Nov 21, 2012
In The Grammar of Ornament (1856), his highly influential sourcebook that defined decoration as a universal human impulse, the architect Owen Jones had nothing kind to say about Chinese art and ornament. This diatribe catches the present-day reader slightly off-guard, coming as it does after a series of surprisingly cosmopolitan claims: claims that Moorish ornamentation achieved a level of perfection that Christian artisans would only begin to approximate centuries later; that Mexican decoration leaves a viewer “astonished” by its “high state” of execution; that in all of Indian art, “we find nothing that has been added without purpose, nor that could be removed without disadvantage.” When Jones reaches China, however, he immediately lapses into a cultural chauvinism born from ignorance, making claims that the millennia of civilizations in the region have been “totally unimaginative”, “wholly devoid of either architectural design or ornament”, and that the Chinese ceramics tradition is surpassed by “the rude water-bottles of porous clay which the untutored Arabian potter fashions daily on the banks of the Nile, assisted only by the instincts of his gentle race.”
What then led Jones to write an entire book on Chinese ornament a decade later? Well, it turns out he was wrong, and he admits as much . . . in a way. “I was led, from my then knowledge, to express the opinion that the Chinese had not the power of dealing with conventional ornamental form: but it now appears that there has been a period in which a School of Art existed in China of a very important kind.” He describes how the Second Opium War and Taiping Rebellion — waged between the publication of his two books — led to “the destruction and sacking of many public buildings” and a sudden influx of “truly magnificent works” to private collections in Europe and to the holdings of the National Collection at South Kensington (now the V&A). Spoils, in other words: such as the estimated million objects looted by British and French troops during October 1860 from the Yuanmingyuan palace complex that was subsequently razed in Beijing. Despite his reversal in taste, Jones’ first loves remain palpable in Examples of Chinese Ornament. During a grand tour of Europe and North Africa in his youth, he developed his interest in geometry and polychrome patterning while gazing up, awestruck, at the Alhambra in Andalusia, Spain. Finding a similar level of complexity in Chinese ornament, he suspects that the entire tradition derives from a “foreign origin”: “There is of course, in all these works, something essentially Chinese in the mode of rendering the idea, but the original idea is evidently Mohammedan.”
Below you can browse a selection of chromolithograph patterns from Jones’ book of examples. The plates are reproductions of ornamentation found on painted vases, cloisonné enamel incense burners, lacquer boxes, and many more objects. Unfortunately, the descriptions given by Jones are far from scholarly: he provided no means of linking a pattern back to its museum holding; made no attempt to date or locate where the object came from; and to an almost comical degree, he found the need to note, again and again, how these Chinese designs seem derivative of Persian and Indian motifs. Kate Hill has helped fill in some of the blanks here. The chromolithographs feature patterns from falangcai vessels with Daoguang marks, Qianlong-era vases, and Yongzheng bowls. Instead of offering a comprehensive view of Chinese ornament, Jones seems to have suppressed decorative schemes and flattened designs that did not fit with the principles outlined in his earlier Grammar.
Despite these shortcomings, Examples of Chinese Ornament continues to prove of interest for its depth of captured color, ornamental complexity, and influence on European chinoiserie. In her 2001 artwork Identity — a porcelain vase that purposefully resembles Chinese ceramics made for export to Europe — Hong Kong–born artist Sin-ying Ho reproduced patterns compiled by Jones. “Each motif is several times removed from its origin”, writes Alex Burchmore, “blurring authenticity and fabrication while resisting identification with a ‘pure’ cultural essence.” Perhaps this is the best way to view the plates below: designs that must be viewed through the eyes of an English architect, marveling at the foreign influence he sees in possibly looted treasures, trying to imagine what China might be.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 21, 2012
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Hunter Dukes
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:46.189479
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/examples-of-chinese-ornament-1867/"
}
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yes-virginia-there-is-a-santa-claus-1897
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (1897)
Dec 21, 2012
In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked a question by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia, which many a parent has been asked before: whether Santa Claus really exists. O'Hanlon deferred. He suggested Virginia wrote asking the question to one of New York's most prominent newspapers at the time, The Sun, assuring her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so."
Dear Editor: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
The response to Virginia's letter by one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, remains the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the English language and found itself the subject of books, a film and television series. In his response Church goes beyond a simple "yes of course" to explore the philosophical issues behind Virginia's request to tell her "the truth" and in the process lampoon a certain skepticism which he had found rife in American society since the suffering of the Civil War. His message in short - there is a reality beyond the visible.
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 21, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:46.613354
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yes-virginia-there-is-a-santa-claus-1897/"
}
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santa-claus-conquers-the-martians-1964
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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Dec 18, 2012
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a 1964 science fiction film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made. It is regularly featured in the "bottom 100" list on the Internet Movie Database, and was featured in an episode of the 1986 syndicated series, the Canned Film Festival. It was directed by Nicholas Webster, and it stars John Call as Santa Claus. It also includes an 8-year-old Pia Zadora playing the role of one of the Martian children. The film took on newfound fame in the 1990s after being featured on an episode of the comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000. It became a holiday staple on the Comedy Central cable channel in the years following its 1991 premiere. It has since found new life again in the 2000s having been riffed by Cinematic Titanic. The movie was also featured on the current run of "Elvira's Movie Macabre." The plot? In a bid to make disgruntled Martian children happier, Martians kidnap Santa from Earth... (Wikipedia)
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public-domain-review
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Dec 18, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:47.098497
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/santa-claus-conquers-the-martians-1964/"
}
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a-pictorial-history-of-santa-claus
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A Pictorial History of Santa Claus
Dec 13, 2012
Contrary to what many believe, Santa Claus as we know him today - sleigh riding, gift-giving, rotund and white bearded with his distinctive red suit trimmed with white fur - was not the creation of the Coca Cola Company. Although their Christmas advertising campaigns of the 1930s and 40s were key to popularising the image, Santa can be seen in his modern form decades before Coca Cola's illustrator Haddon Sundblom got to work. Prior to settling on his famed red garb and jolly bearded countenance, throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Santa morphed through a variety of different looks. From the description given in Clement Moore's A Visit from St Nicholas in 1822, through the vision of artist Thomas Nast, and later Norman Rockwell, Mr Claus gradually shed his various guises and became the jolly red-suited Santa we know today. Below we've put together a little pictorial guide showing his evolvement through the ages.
13TH CENTURY
The name Santa Claus has his roots in the informal Dutch name for St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas (an abbreviation of Sint Nikolaas). St. Nicholas was a historic 4th-century Greek saint (from an area now in modern day Turkey) who had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes left out for him. He was also famous for presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.
Being the patron saint of children St. Nicholas has long been associated with giving gifts to children. The parallels to the modern day Santa Claus don't end there. In his Dutch form of Sinterklaas he was imagined to carry a staff, ride above the rooftops (on a huge white horse) and have mischievous helpers who listened at chimneys to find out whether children were being bad or good. These features all also link him to the legend of Odin, a god who was worshipped among the Germanic peoples in North and Western Europe prior to Christianization.
Although in Europe the feast of St. Nicholas, typically on the 6th December, was very popular throughout the middle ages, after the reformation in the 16th century the celebration died out in most Protestant countries, apart from Holland where the celebration of Sinterklaas lived on.
17th CENTURY
Another important tributary to the image of Santa Claus was the phenomenon of Father Christmas - also known as Old Father Christmas, Sir Christmas, and Lord Christmas - a traditional figure in English folklore and identified with the similarly bearded Old English god Woden. He typically represented the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, but was not associated with either children or the bringing of gifts.
The earliest English examples of the personification of Christmas are thought to be from a 15th century carol which refers to a "Sire Christmas". The picture above is from Josiah King's The Examination and Tryal of Father Christmas (1686), published shortly after Christmas was reinstated as a holy day in England after being banned in post Civil War England as a symbol of "Catholic superstition and godless self-indulgence.”
1810
Although the east coast of America was full of Dutch settlers, it was not until the early 19th century that the figure of "Sinterklaas" would make his way properly across the Atlantic and so give birth to the Americanised Santa Claus. Following the Revolutionary War the already heavily Dutch influenced New York City (formerly of course named New Amsterdam) saw a new surge of interest in Dutch customs, and with them St. Nicholas. In 1804 John Pintard, an influential patriot and antiquarian, founded the New York Historical Society and promoted St. Nicholas as patron saint of both the society and city. On December 6th 1810 the society hosted its first St. Nicholas anniversary dinner and Pintard commissioned the artist Alexander Anderson to draw an image of the saint to be handed out at the dinner. In Anderson's portrayal he was still shown as a religious figure, but now he was also clearly depositing gifts in fireside stockings and is associated with rewarding the goodness of children. While "St. Nicholas day" never quite took off in the way Pintard wanted, Anderson's image of "Sancte Claus" most certainly did.
A year before the New York Historical Society's feast the author Washington Irving had written about Santa in his satirical fiction Knickerbocker's History of New York, describing a jolly St. Nicholas character as opposed to the saintly bishop of yesteryear - one who flew in a reindeer pulled sleigh and delivered presents down chimneys. The next key step to securing the image of Santa Claus was the 1822 poem entitled A Visit from St. Nicholas written by Clement Moore, later better known as The Night Before Christmas. Moore drew upon Irving's description and Pintard's New Amsterdam tradition and added some more Odin-like elements from German and Norse legends to create the all-winking, sleigh-riding Saint and also the names for his flying reindeer.
1863
As time went by, more and more was added to the Santa Claus legend. The cartoonist Thomas Nast established the bounds for Santa Claus' current look with an initial illustration in an 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly, as part of a large illustration titled "A Christmas Furlough".
In later Nast drawings a home at the North Pole was added, as was the workshop for building toys and a large book filled with the names of children who had been naughty or nice.
1864
Although Nast had gotten the paraphernalia of reindeer, sleigh, etc down to a tee, the famous red suit was still yet to be set. Over the decades Santa would be depicted in a variety of colours such as blue, green and the yellow as pictured in this 1864 edition of Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas".
1868
In this 1868 advert for Sugar Plums we see the red of the jacket, but the hat is green and he appears to have no trousers on at all.
1881
In this later 1881 illustration by Thomas Nast named "Merry Old Santa" the modern Santa character really begins to take shape. Present is the jolly rotundity and the all important red of the suit.
1902
The Life and Adventures Of Santa Claus by author of The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, with its elaborations and much added detail went a long way to popularising the legend of Santa. However, in the cover to the first edition of Baum's book we see the red of his suit is still yet to be 'mandatory'.
In this cover for Puck illustrated by the Australian Frank A. Nankivell, we see perhaps for the first time a depcition of Santa which is indistinguishable from that of the present day.
1906
In this Canadian department store brochure from 1906 we see that Santa, with his black trimmed suit and bobble-less hat, was still able to deviate from his typical image.
1913
The illustrator Norman Rockwell, with his many depictions throughout the 1920s, was a key player in cementing Santa's modern look. Here is an early illustration of his from before the First World War.
1914
A Japanese illustration from 1914, showing the spread of the Santa legend had reached far wider than just Europe and America.
1918
Santa appears in classic form in this piece of U.S. WW1 propaganda.
1920
Pictured here are just two of Norman Rockwell's many Santa themed covers for the Saturday Evening Post. Like Sundblom's depictions for Coca Cola more than a decade later, these pictures of Rockwell's give a very physiologically human and naturalistic aspect to the character as opposed to the more cartoonish features which had gone before.
1930
Santa in Australia in 1930.
1942
In the U.S. Second World War poster below Santa takes a radical departure from the jolly red suit and dons the dour shades of war.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 13, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:47.619681
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-pictorial-history-of-santa-claus/"
}
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illustrations-from-a-chapbook-on-robinson-crusoe-ca-1800
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Illustrations from a Chapbook on Robinson Crusoe (ca. 1800)
Dec 7, 2012
Illustrations from a chapbook entitled The Surprising Life and most Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of the City of York, Mariner (ca.1800) as featured in John Ashton's Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century (1882).
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public-domain-review
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Dec 7, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:48.049577
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/illustrations-from-a-chapbook-on-robinson-crusoe-ca-1800/"
}
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diary-days-from-christmas-past
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Diary Days from Christmas Past
Dec 18, 2012
With December 25th fast approaching we have put together a little collection of entries for Christmas Day from an eclectic mix of different diaries spanning five centuries, from 1599 to 1918. Amid famed diarists such as the wife-beating Samuel Pepys, the distinctly non-festive John Adams, and the rhapsodic Thoreau, there are a sprinkling of daily jottings from relative unknowns - many speaking apart from loved ones, at war, sea or in foreign climes.
All diaries are housed at the Internet Archive - click the link below each extract to take you to the source.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 18, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:48.520808
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/diary-days-from-christmas-past/"
}
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one-world-or-none-1946
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One World or None (1946)
Nov 23, 2012
A film from the Prelinger Archives showing the horrors of atomic warfare. Made only one year after the end of the Second World War, it is thought to be the first "atomic scare movie", a genre which would flourish in the U.S. throughout the next decade.
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public-domain-review
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Nov 23, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:49.035279
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/one-world-or-none-1946/"
}
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making-a-living-1914
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Making a Living (1914)
Jan 11, 2013
Making a Living (1914) marked Charlie Chaplin's first ever film appearance. In the film he plays a lady-charming swindler, Edgar English, who runs afoul of the Keystone Kops. Chaplin strongly disliked the picture, but one review picked him out as "a comedian of the first water." Although his character wears a large moustache, top hat, and carries a cane, it was not until his next film, Kid Auto Races at Venice, that Chaplin would appear as his famous Tramp character with which he would thereon be identified. The music we hear over the film (added afterwards) is by Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers.
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public-domain-review
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Jan 11, 2013
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:49.502385
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/making-a-living-1914/"
}
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twelve-twelve-twelve
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Twelve Twelve Twelve
Dec 12, 2012
To celebrate the most auspicious occasion of it being the 12th day of the 12th month of the 12th year, i.e. 12/12/12, we've put together a little collection of twelve pictures of people in groups of twelve. Through a mix of paintings and photographs we travel all over the world, from Central Java in Indonesia to very northern Sweden, from south-eastern Russia to the palace of Archduke Leopold Salvador of Austria.
All images sourced from the very handy Wikimedia Commons category "Group portraits with 12 persons".
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public-domain-review
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Dec 12, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:49.966187
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/twelve-twelve-twelve/"
}
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the-nine-lives-of-a-cat-1860
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The Nine Lives of a Cat (1860)
Jan 10, 2013
Beautifully illustrated (though perhaps not so well rhymed!) tale of the cat with nine lives. From the preface:
This tale of wonder is told for children; with which view, it has been carefully designed and very nicely printed. For some time past, it has arrived at the dignity of a popular Nursery Tale in the Author's family ; and it is hoped it will merit the same good fortune elsewhere. It will be worth while explaining, that the circle in each page is made to represent some object in connection with the story ; and, that as some of them have proved rather puzzling, to Juvenile admirers has been left the task of " finding them out."
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public-domain-review
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Jan 10, 2013
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:50.472729
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-nine-lives-of-a-cat-1860/"
}
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the-first-new-year-1885
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The First New Year (1885)
Dec 31, 2012
A short little poem meditating on the inevitable end of all things and the power of new beginnings. Little is known about the author George Warwick although he appears to also be the author of this poem on the theme of Christmas in a similar pamphlet series kept by the Library of Congress.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 31, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:50.933325
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-first-new-year-1885/"
}
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frank-c-stanley-singing-auld-lang-syne-1910
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Frank C. Stanley singing Auld Lang Syne (1910)
Dec 28, 2012
Frank C. Stanley performing Auld Lang Syne, the poem written by the Scotsman Robert Burns which is traditionally sung to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight. The song's Scots title may be translated into English literally as "old long since", or more idiomatically, "long long ago", "days gone by" or "old times". Consequently "For auld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, might be loosely translated as "for (the sake of) old times". The lyrics of the poem were themselves heavily based on pre-existing verses. Robert Burns sent a copy of his song to the Scots Musical Museum with the remark, "The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man." Some of the lyrics were indeed "collected" rather than composed by the poet; the ballad "Old Long Syne" printed in 1711 by James Watson shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns' later poem, and is almost certainly derived from the same "old song". It is a fair supposition to attribute the rest of the poem to Burns himself. (Wikipedia)
Stanley also made a name for himself as a banjo player under his real name William Stanley Grinsted. This recording was made in the year of his death, 1910, only months before he died of pleurisy on 12 December at his home in Orange, New Jersey.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 28, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:51.426541
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/frank-c-stanley-singing-auld-lang-syne-1910/"
}
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sir-isaac-newton-s-daniel-and-the-apocalypse-1733
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Sir Isaac Newton’s Daniel and the Apocalypse (1733)
Dec 21, 2012
Best known for his advancements in scientific thought Sir Isaac Newton was also big into his apocalyptic prophecy. Largely unknown and unpublished documents, evidently written by Isaac Newton, indicate that he believed the world could end in 2060 AD. (He also had many other possible dates e.g. 2034). Despite the dramatic nature of a prediction of the end of the world, Newton may not have been referring to the 2060 date as a destructive act resulting in the annihilation of the earth and its inhabitants, but rather one in which he believed the world was to be replaced with a new one based upon a transition to an era of divinely inspired peace. In Christian theology, this concept is often referred to as The Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of Paradise by The Kingdom of God on Earth. In his posthumously-published Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, Newton expressed his belief that Bible prophecy would not be understood "until the time of the end", and that even then "none of the wicked shall understand". Referring to that as a future time ("the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching"), Newton also anticipated "the general preaching of the Gospel be approaching" and "the Gospel must first be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world". (Wikipedia)
Some great extra reading on Newton's passion for Biblical prophecy and the date of 2060 AD can be found here on the isaac-newton.org website
Also see in HTML and text version here on the Internet Archive via Project Gutenberg.
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public-domain-review
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Dec 21, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:51.879471
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/sir-isaac-newton-s-daniel-and-the-apocalypse-1733/"
}
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omar-rabbi-elozor-by-cantor-meyer-kanewsky-and-his-choir-1919
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Omar Rabbi Elozor by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and his choir (1919)
Dec 5, 2012
"Omar Rabbi Elozor" (In English: "Said Rabbi Eliezar"), performed by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and his choir in 1919 for Edison Records. The lyrics are based on the last passage of Tractate Berakhot, from the Talmud, with a few repeats. The first line roughly translates as: "Said Rabbi Elazar, quoting Rabbi Chaninah, Scholars increase the levels of peace in the world".
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public-domain-review
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Dec 5, 2012
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collection
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2024-05-01T21:43:52.336824
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{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/omar-rabbi-elozor-by-cantor-meyer-kanewsky-and-his-choir-1919/"
}
|
|
decayed-daguerreotypes
|
Decayed Daguerreotypes
Text by Adam Green
Jan 8, 2013
A selection of images from the Library of Congress found via the always excellent Ptak Science Books blog. The daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1837, was the first commercially successful photographic process and was popular throughout the mid-19th century. Daguerreotype portraits were made by the model posing (often with head fixed in place with a clamp to keep it still the few minutes required) before an exposed light-sensitive silvered copper plate, which was then developed by mercury fumes and fixed with salts. This fixing however was far from permanent - like the people they captured the images too were subject to change and decay. They were extremely sensitive to scratches, dust, hair, etc, and particularly the rubbing of the glass cover if the glue holding it in place deteriorated. As well as rubbing, the glass itself can also deteriorate and bubbles of solvent explode upon the image. The daguerreotypes below are from the studio of Mathew Brady, one of the most celebrated 19th-century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War which earned him the title of "father of photojournalism". The Library of Congress received the majority of the Brady daguerreotypes as a gift from the Army War College in 1920.
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public-domain-review
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Jan 8, 2013
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:52.803755
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/decayed-daguerreotypes/"
}
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woodrow-wilson-on-democratic-principles-1912
|
Woodrow Wilson On Democratic Principles (1912)
Sep 7, 2017
Recorded on September 24th 1912, "Democratic Principles" (track 2 in the player above) was one of a series of six recordings made by Wilson in the run up to the 1912 presidential election — the other recordings were "On the Third Party, "On The Trusts, "To the Farmers" (track 1 above), "On Labor", and "On the Tariff". According to Woodrow Wilson and the Press, the process was not a pleasant one for Wilson. Josephus Daniels — whom, with a little help from Mrs Wilson, persuaded a reluctant Wilson to do it — recalled how Wilson "went at it as though he was going to the stake.... He spoke into the machine and made the records and when he came out he said he felt as though he had been offered up. He acted as if Mrs Wilson and I were his worst enemies and persecutors." (280) Despite his reticence, the recording would go on to be a great success for Wilson, and no doubt helped him in his eventual victory come polling day. Below a transcript of "On Democratic Principles".
We stand in the presence of an awakened nation impatient of partisan make-believe. The nation has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and neglected duties to a consciousness that the rank and file of her people find life very hard to sustain. That her young men find opportunity embarrassed and that her older men find business difficult to renew and maintain because of circumstances of privilege and private advantage which have interlaced their subtle threads throughout almost every part of the framework of our present law. She has awakened to the knowledge that she has lost certain cherished liberties and wasted priceless resources which she had solemnly undertaken to hold in trust for posterity and for all mankind, and to the conviction that she stands confronted with an occasion for constructive statesmanship such as has not arisen since the great days in which our government was set up. There never was a time when impatience and suspicion were more keenly aroused by private powers selfishly employed, when jealously of everything concealed or touched with any purpose not linked with the general good or inconsistent with it, more sharply or immediately displayed itself. Nor is the country ever more susceptible to unselfish appeals or to the high arguments of sincere justice; these are the unmistakable symptoms of an awakening. There is the more need for wise counsel because the people are so ready to heed counsel, if it be given honestly and in their interests. It is in the broad light of this new day that we stand face to face with great questions of right and of justice, questions of national development, of the development of character and of the standards of action, no less than of a better business system--more free, more equitable, more open to ordinary men, practicable to live under, tolerable to work under--or a better fiscal system whose taxes shall not come out of the pockets of the many because of the pockets of the few, and within whose intricacies special privilege may not so easily find cover. What is there to do? There are two great things to do. One is to set up the rule of justice and of rights in such matters as the tariff, the correction of the trusts and the prevention of monopoly, the adaptation of our banking and currency laws to the very beauties of which our people must put them, the treatment of those who do the daily labor in our factories and mines and throughout all of our great industrial and commercial undertakings as they should be treated in a civilized politic, and the political life of the people of the Philippines for whom we hold governmental power in trust for their service, not our own. The other thing, the additional duty, is the great task of protecting our people and our resources, and of keeping open to the whole people the doors of opportunity to which they must, generation by generation, pass if they are to make conquests of their fortunes in health, in freedom, in peace and in contentment. In the performance of this second great duty, we are face to face with questions of conservation and of development, questions of forests and water powers, and mines and waterways, and the building of an adequate merchant marine, of the opening of every highway and facility, and the setting up of every safeguard needed by a great industrious expanding nation.
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public-domain-review
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Sep 7, 2017
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:53.617582
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/woodrow-wilson-on-democratic-principles-1912/"
}
|
|
the-first-shape-book-little-red-riding-hood-1863
|
The First Shape Book: Little Red Riding Hood (1863)
Text by Adam Green
Sep 20, 2017
The first mass-produced book to deviate from a rectilinear format, at least in the United States, is thought to be this 1863 edition of Red Riding Hood, cut into the shape of the protagonist herself with the troublesome wolf curled at her feet. Produced by the Boston-based publisher Louis Prang, this is the first in their "Doll Series", a set of five "die-cut" books, known also as shape books — the other titles being Robinson Crusoe, Goody Two-Shoes (also written by Red Riding Hood author Lydia Very), Cinderella, and King Winter. An 1868 Prang catalogue would later claim that such "books in the shape of a regular paper Doll... originated with us". It would seem the claim could also extend to die cut books in general, as we can't find anything sooner, but do let us know in the comments if you have further light to shed on this! Such books are, of course, still popular in children's publishing today, though the die cutting is not now limited to mere outlines, as evidenced in a beautiful 2014 version of the same Little Red Riding Hood story. The die cut has also been employed in the non-juvenile sphere as well, a recent example being Jonathan Safran Foer's ambitious Tree of Codes.
As for this particular rendition of Charles Perrault's classic tale, the text and design is by Lydia Very (1823-1901), sister of Transcendentalist poet Jones Very. The gruesome ending of the original — which sees Little Red Riding Hood being gobbled up as well as her grandmother — is avoided here, the gore giving way to the less bloody aims of the morality tale, and the lesson that one should not disobey one's mother.
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public-domain-review
|
Sep 20, 2017
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:54.064164
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-first-shape-book-little-red-riding-hood-1863/"
}
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william-sharp-s-chromolithographs-of-the-great-water-lily-1854
|
William Sharp’s Chromolithographs of The Great Water Lily (1854)
Aug 2, 2017
These six magnificent colour lithographs are to be found in Victoria Regia, or, The Great Water Lily of America: With a Brief Account of its Discovery and Introduction into Cultivation (1854), a work by amateur botanist John Fisk Allen which documents his attempts to propagate the Amazon's Victoria regia (now called Victoria amazonica) in the more northerly climes of his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. The wonderfully lavish plates accompanying the slim volume are the work of the British-born printer William Sharp, who is credited with creating the very first chromolithograph on American soil — a portrait of Reverend F. W. P. Greenwood. These images produced for John Fisk Allen's book are, according to Christies, the "very first colour-printed lithographs produced in America". Why they are ignoring the Greenwood portrait, we are not quite sure: it could be that they mean a first in the context of large scale colour printing, as opposed to a one off; or perhaps it is a reflection that some believe it likely that the Greenwood portrait was actually a lithotint with colours printed from a single rather than the multiple stones normally associated with chromolithography. In any case, with their bold and stunning depth of colours, these water lily images by Sharp stand out as some of the finest examples of chromolithography, an art which at the time was only in its infancy.
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public-domain-review
|
Aug 2, 2017
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:54.549830
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/william-sharp-s-chromolithographs-of-the-great-water-lily-1854/"
}
|
|
the-history-of-ink-including-its-etymology-chemistry-and-bibliography-1860
|
The History of Ink: Including its Etymology, Chemistry, and Bibliography (1860)
Text by Adam Green
Jul 19, 2017
This delightful little book — the creation of Thaddeus Davids and Co, one of the largest ink manufacturers of its day — is a wonderful example of form matching content. Not only is the main body text in a kind of a cursive type that points to many hours of labour with pen and ink pot, but the pages are also adorned — in the titles, headers, initials, etc. — with a multitude of typefaces that combine to boast of the sheer variety of their subject's history. As the subtitle indicates, the book comes at ink from a number of different angles, and is full of surprises, including a page (see below) — before the plates at the end — listing different inks ("Blackwood's Black", "Harrison's Columbian", etc.), each written out in that respective brand, and exposed to sun and rain for five months to test their staying power. Needless to say that "Davids and Co Limpid Writing Fluid" stands out amid the competition. The extensive plates at the end are also a delight, providing writing samples from the "oldest Hieratic writing extant — about the 15th century B. C." to "Wellington, April 21, 1834". We are also treated to three pages detailing how more than fifty different languages say the word "ink".
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public-domain-review
|
Jul 19, 2017
|
Adam Green
|
collection
|
2024-05-01T21:43:55.024213
|
{
"license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
"url": "https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-history-of-ink-including-its-etymology-chemistry-and-bibliography-1860/"
}
|
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