The Public Domain Review
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Centuries before Neo instantly mastered Kung Fu in *The Matrix*, medieval scholars found a shortcut to years of difficult study: a magical manuscript that promised to fast-track advanced learning. Anne Lawrence-Mathers investigates the *Ars notoria*, its supposed powers, and the demonic influence it had upon some users.
Photographs from when Atlantic City beaches featured artists ornately sculpting sand.
A Zoroastrian text about serpents translated by the President of the Bombay Anthropological Society.
Circular maps custom-made for the fire towers that once dotted the American wilderness.
Pompous know-it-alls were once a mainstay of mockery on the Italian stage. Arnoud Visser investigates this stock character of the pedant and his association with individual superiority, social distinction, and sexual transgression, finding a form of satire that took aim at the Renaissance humanist’s erudition and lofty ideals.
Cover designs for José Carlos Mariátegui’s radical Lima-based magazine.
Selections from the long-running British journal on historical peculiarities, from the whereabouts of Mary Queen of Scot’s severed head to the identity of Charles I's hooded executioner.
Diagrams from a now-lost Urdu manuscript illustrating the propitious days and directions for travel.
Arguably the first work of fiction to feature a *Tyrannosaurus rex*, Louis Pope Gratacap’s *The New Northland* (1915) is at once kaleidoscopic, mischievous, fascinating — and exhausting. Richard Fallon explores this “lost world” novel, finding a work as interested in cutting-edge science as it was in paying dues to its generic precursors.
69 images of kite flying from across 5 centuries and some dozen countries.
