![The Public Domain Review](/static/pdr-logo_2x-a9aa17abb46a7af84cd791867a6031ec.png)
Essays
![Athanasius, Underground](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/athanasius-underground/fires-underground.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
With his enormous range of scholarly pursuits the 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher has been hailed as the last Renaissance man and "the master of hundred arts". John Glassie looks at one of Kircher's great masterworks Mundus Subterraneus and how it was inspired by a subterranean adventure Kircher himself made into the bowl of Vesuvius. more
![Trüth, Beaüty, and Volapük](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/truth-beauty-and-volapuk/volapuk-crest.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
Arika Okrent explores the rise and fall of Volapük - a universal language created in the late 19th century by a German priest called Johann Schleyer. more
![The Implacability of Things](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-implacability-of-things/8049843108_53137b2220_o.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
Jonathan Lamb explores the genre of 'it-narratives' - stories told from the point of view of an object, often as it travels in circulation through human hands. more
![Mrs Giacometti Prodgers, the Cabman’s Nemesis](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/mrs-giacometti-prodgers-the-cabman-s-nemesis/prodgers-bw-540-notitle.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Mrs Giacometti Prodgers, the Cabman’s Nemesis
Heather Tweed explores the story of the woman whose obsessive penchant for the lawsuit struck fear into the magistrates and cabmen of Victorian London alike. more
![The Last Great Explorer: William F. Warren and the Search for Eden](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-last-great-explorer-william-f-warren-and-the-search-for-eden/7900821292_42ceb10784_o.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
The Last Great Explorer: William F. Warren and the Search for Eden
Of all the attempts throughout history to geographically locate the Garden of Eden one of the most compelling was that set out by minister and president of Boston University, William F. Warren. Brook Wilensky-Lanford looks at the ideas of the man who, in his book Paradise Found, proposed the home of all humanity to be at the North Pole. more
![The Lancashire Witches 1612-2012](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-lancashire-witches-1612-2012/Mather-Wonders-of-the-Invisible-World-1689-540.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
The Lancashire Witches 1612-2012
Not long after ten Lancashire residents were found guilty of witchcraft and hanged in August 1612, the official proceedings of the trial were published by the clerk of the court Thomas Potts in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster. Four hundred years on, Robert Poole reflects on England's biggest witch trial and how it still has relevance today. more
![Conan Doyle’s Olympic Crusade](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/conan-doyles-olympic-crusade/pietri_dorando-finish-5401.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
When an exhausted Dorando Pietri was helped across the finishing line in the 1908 Olympics marathon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was there to write about it for the Daily Mail. Peter Lovesey explores how the drama and excitement of this event led Conan Doyle to become intimately involved with the development of the modern Olympics as we know it. more
![The First Olympic Protest](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-first-olympic-protest/7631037406_1ee5fbd58f_o.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
Rebecca Jenkins looks back to when London first hosted the Olympic Games and how a mix up with flags gave birth to the first Olympic protest. more
![John Martin and the Theatre of Subversion](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/john-martin-and-the-theatre-of-subversion/7495328686_f8710818b8_o.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
John Martin and the Theatre of Subversion
Max Adams, author of The Prometheans, looks at the art of John Martin and how in his epic landscapes of apocalyptic scale one can see reflected his revolutionary leanings. more
![The Polyglot of Bologna](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-polyglot-of-bologna/mezzofanti-thumb2.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Michael Erard takes a look at The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, a book exploring the extraordinary talent of the 19th century Italian cardinal who was reported to be able to speak over seventy languages. more
![Seeing Joyce](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/seeing-joyce/7240826570_86f451f4ce_o.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The "Bloomsday" of 2012 - 108 years after Leopold Bloom took his legendary walk around Dublin on the 16th June 1904 - was the first since the works of James Joyce entered the public domain. Frank Delaney asks whether we should perhaps now stop trying to read Joyce and instead make visits to him as to a gallery. more
![The Krakatoa Sunsets](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-krakatoa-sunsets/Krakatoa_eruption_lithograph-cut1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
When a volcano erupted on a small island in Indonesia in 1883, the evening skies of the world glowed for months with strange colours. Richard Hamblyn explores a little-known series of letters that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins sent in to the journal Nature describing the phenomenon - letters that would constitute the majority of the small handful of writings published while he was alive. more
![The Assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-assassination-of-the-prime-minister-spencer-perceval/BELLINGHAM-1812-norris.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The Assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval
Only once has a British Prime Minister been assassinated. Two hundred years ago, on the 11th May 1812, John Bellingham shot dead the Rt. Hon. Spencer Perceval as he entered the House of Commons. David C. Hanrahan tells the story. more
![Painting the New World](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/painting-the-new-world/800px-North_carolina_algonkin-rituale02-540.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
In 1585 the Englishman John White, governor of one of the very first North American colonies, made a series of exquisite watercolour sketches of the native Algonkin people alongside whom the settlers would try to live. Benjamin Breen explores the significance of the sketches and their link to the mystery of what became known as the "Lost Colony". more
![The Unsinkable Myth](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-unsinkable-myth/titaniccomparison3-bw-cut.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
This week sees the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, one of the deadliest peacetime disasters at sea. Richard Howells, author of The Myth of the Titanic, explores the various legends surrounding the world's most famous ship. more
![Remembering Scott](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/remembering-scott/pontinglecturingonjapan.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
A century on from his dramatic death on the way back from the South Pole, the memory of the explorer Captain Scott and his ill-fated Terra Nova expedition is stronger than ever. Max Jones explores the role that the iconic visual record has played in keeping the legend alive. more
![Richard Dadd’s Master-Stroke](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/richard-dadds-master-stroke/dadd-thecrownpatriarch.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Nicholas Tromans, author of Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum, takes a look at Dadd's most famous painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. more
![Lost Libraries](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/lost-libraries/domenicocabinet-detail.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
In the latter half of the 17th century the English polymath Thomas Browne wrote Musaeum Clausum, an imagined inventory of 'remarkable books, antiquities, pictures and rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living'. Claire Preston explores Browne's extraordinary catalogue amid the wider context of a Renaissance preoccupation with lost intellectual treasures. more
![Almost as Good as Presley: Caruso the Pop Idol](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/almost-as-good-as-presley-caruso-the-pop-idol/Caruso_withbust.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Almost as Good as Presley: Caruso the Pop Idol
When he died in 1921 the singer Enrico Caruso left behind him approximately 290 commercially released recordings, and a significant mark upon on the opera world including more than 800 appearances at the New York Met. John Potter, singer and author of Tenor: History of a Voice, explores Caruso's popular appeal and how he straddled the divide between 'pop' and 'classical'. more
![An 18th-Century Genius in Bondage: The Poems and Politics of Phillis Wheatley](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/phillis-wheatley-an-eighteenth-century-genius-in-bondage/wheatleyfrontispiece.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
An 18th-Century Genius in Bondage: The Poems and Politics of Phillis Wheatley
Transported as a slave from West Africa to America when just a child, Phillis Wheatley published in 1773, at the age of twenty, her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published. more
![An Unlikely Lunch: When Maupassant met Swinburne](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/an-unlikely-lunch-when-maupassant-met-swinburne/swinburne-featuredimage4.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
An Unlikely Lunch: When Maupassant met Swinburne
Julian Barnes on when a young Guy de Maupassant was invited to lunch at the holiday cottage of Algernon Swinburne. A flayed human hand, pornography, the serving of monkey meat, and inordinate amounts of alcohol, all made for a truly strange Anglo-French encounter. more
![Selma Lagerlöf: Surface and Depth](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/selma-lagerlof-surface-and-depth/wonderfuladventu0018582_0239-540.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Selma Lagerlöf: Surface and Depth
In 2011 many countries around the world welcomed The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and the other works of the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf into the public domain. Jenny Watson looks at the importance of Lagerlöf's oeuvre and the complex depths beneath her seemingly simple tales and public persona. more
![Robert Southey’s Dreams Revisited](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/robert-southeys-dreams-revisited/Antonio_de_Pereda_1611-1678_-_Visioen_van_een_ridder-540.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Robert Southey’s Dreams Revisited
As well as being poet laureate for 30 years and a prolific writer of letters, Robert Southey was an avid recorder of his dreams. W.A. Speck, author of Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters, explores the poet's dream diary and the importance of dreams in his work. more
![The Mysteries of Nature and Art](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-mysteries-of-nature-and-art/bate-titlepage.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The Mysteries of Nature and Art
Julie Gardham, Senior Assistant Librarian at University of Glasgow's Special Collections Department, takes a look at the book that was said to have spurred a young Isaac Newton onto the scientific path, The Mysteries of Nature and Art by John Bate. more