Open Knowledge project The Public Domain Review is very proud to announce the launch of its second book of selected essays! For nearly five years now we’ve been diligently trawling the rich waters of the public domain, bringing to the surface all sorts of goodness from various openly licensed archives of historical material: from the Library of Congress to the Rijksmuseum, from Wikimedia Commons to the wonderful Internet Archive. We’ve also been showcasing, each fortnight, new writing on a selection of these public domain works, and this new book picks out our very best offerings from 2014.
All manner of oft-overlooked histories are explored in the book. We learn of the strange skeletal tableaux of Frederik Ruysch, pay a visit to Humphry Davy high on laughing gas, and peruse the pages of the first ever picture book for children (which includes the excellent table of Latin animal sounds pictured below). There’s also fireworks in art, petty pirates on trial, brainwashing machines, truth-revealing diseases, synesthetic auras, Byronic vampires, and Charles Darwin’s photograph collection of asylum patients. Together the fifteen illustrated essays chart a wonderfully curious course through the last five hundred years of history — from sea serpents of the 16th-century deep to early-20th-century Ouija literature — taking us on a journey through some of the darker, stranger, and altogether more intriguing corners of the past.
Order by 18th November to benefit from a special reduced price and delivery in time for Christmas
If you are wanting to get the book in time for Christmas (and we do think it’d make an excellent gift for that history-loving relative or friend!), then please make sure to order before midnight on Wednesday 18th November. Orders placed before this date will also benefit from a special reduced price!
Please visit the dedicated page on The Public Domain Review site to learn more and also buy the book!
Adam Green is Editor of The Public Domain Review.
