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EssaysCulture & History
![Race and the White Elephant War of 1884](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/race-and-the-white-elephant-war-of-1884/37501044282_4186a01dd0_z.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Race and the White Elephant War of 1884
Feuding impresarios, a white-but-not-white-enough elephant, and racist ads for soap — Ross Bullen on how a bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race, and inadvertently laid bare the ideological constructions at their heart. more
![Out From Behind This Mask](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/out-from-behind-this-mask/ex95-1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
A Barthesian bristle and the curious power of Walt Whitman’s posthumous eyelids — D. Graham Burnett on meditations conjured by a visit to the death masks of the Laurence Hutton Collection. more
![The Long, Forgotten Walk of David Ingram](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-long-forgotten-walk-of-david-ingram/35456167341_d9328b5d71_b-1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The Long, Forgotten Walk of David Ingram
If three shipwrecked English sailors really did travel by foot from Florida to Nova Scotia in 1569 then it would certainly count as one of the most remarkable walks undertaken in recorded history. Although the account's more fantastical elements, such as the sighting of elephants, have spurred many to consign it to the fiction department, John Toohey argues for a second look. more
![Decoding the Morse: The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/decoding-the-morse-the-history-of-16th-century-narcoleptic-walruses/35133002452_fed59da9f1_o.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Decoding the Morse: The History of 16th-Century Narcoleptic Walruses
Amongst the assorted curiosities described in Olaus Magnus' 1555 tome on Nordic life was the morse — a hirsute, fearsome walrus-like beast, that was said to snooze upon cliffs while hanging by its teeth. Natalie Lawrence explores the career of this chimerical wonder, shaped by both scholarly images of a fabulous North and the grisly corporeality of the trade in walrus skins, teeth, and bone. more
![Woodcuts and Witches](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/woodcuts-and-witches/Witches-thumb2.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Jon Crabb on the witch craze of early modern Europe, and how the concurrent rise of the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone — complete with cauldron and cats — so familiar today. more
![Lofty Only in Sound: Crossed Wires and Community in 19th-Century Dreams](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/lofty-only-in-sound-crossed-wires-and-community-in-19th-century-dreams/dreams-thumb.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Lofty Only in Sound: Crossed Wires and Community in 19th-Century Dreams
Alicia Puglionesi explores a curious case of supposed dream telepathy at the end of the US Civil War, in which old ideas about the prophetic nature of dreaming collided with loss, longing, and new possibilities of communication at a distance. more
![A Queer Taste for Macaroni](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/a-queer-taste-for-macaroni/macaroni-thumb-2.jpeg?w=600&h=1200)
With his enormous hair, painted face, and dainty attire, the so-called "macaroni" was a common sight upon the streets and ridiculing prints of 1770s London. Dominic Janes explores how with this new figure — and the scandalous sodomy trials with which the stereotype became entwined — a widespread discussion of same-sex desire first entered the public realm, long before the days of Oscar Wilde. more
![George Washington: A Descendant of Odin?](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/george-washington-a-descendant-of-odin/viking-us-straight-copy.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
George Washington: A Descendant of Odin?
Yvonne Seale on a bizarre and fanciful piece of genealogical scholarship and what it tells us about identity in late 19th-century America. more
![“Let us Calculate!”: Leibniz, Llull, and the Computational Imagination](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-the-computational-imagination/leibniz-machine-copy.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
“Let us Calculate!”: Leibniz, Llull, and the Computational Imagination
Three hundred years after the death of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and seven hundred years after the death of Ramon Llull, Jonathan Gray looks at how their early visions of computation and the “combinatorial art” speak to our own age of data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. more
![Richard Hakluyt and Early English Travel](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/richard-hakluyt-and-early-english-travel/800px-1572_Typus_Orbis_Terrarum_Ortelius.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Richard Hakluyt and Early English Travel
The Principal Navigations, Richard Hakluyt's great championing of Elizabethan colonial exploration, remains one of the most important collections of English travel writing ever published. As well as the escapades of famed names such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Nandini Das looks at how the book preserves many stories of lesser known figures that surely would have been otherwise lost. more
![The Calcutta Pococurante Society: Public and Private in India’s Age of Reform](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-calcutta-pococurante-society-public-and-private-in-indias-age-of-reform/Pococurante-thumb-2.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The Calcutta Pococurante Society: Public and Private in India’s Age of Reform
Joshua Ehrlich on an obscure text found on the shelves of a Bengali library and the light it sheds on the idea of the "public" in 19th-century Calcutta. more
![“Unlimiting the Bounds”: the Panorama and the Balloon View](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/unlimiting-the-bounds-the-panorama-and-the-balloon-view/28081063653_a69d5a3ac5_o.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
“Unlimiting the Bounds”: the Panorama and the Balloon View
The second essay in a two-part series in which Lily Ford explores how balloon flight transformed our ideas of landscape. Here she looks at the phenomenon of the panorama, and how its attempts at creating the immersive view were inextricably linked to the new visual experience opened up by the advent of ballooning. more
![“For the Sake of the Prospect”: Experiencing the World from Above in the Late 18th Century](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/for-the-sake-of-the-prospect-experiencing-the-world-from-above-in-the-late-18th-century/Baldwin-detail.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
“For the Sake of the Prospect”: Experiencing the World from Above in the Late 18th Century
The first essay in a two-part series in which Lily Ford explores how balloon flight transformed our ideas of landscape. We begin with a look at the unique set of images included in Thomas Baldwin's Airopaidia (1786) — the first "real" overhead aerial views. more
![The Secret History of Holywell Street: Home to Victorian London’s Dirty Book Trade](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/the-secret-history-of-holywell-street-home-to-victorian-london-s-dirty-book-trade/27977985105_756d16b0cb_o-1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
The Secret History of Holywell Street: Home to Victorian London’s Dirty Book Trade
Victorian sexuality is often considered synonymous with prudishness, conjuring images of covered-up piano legs and dark ankle-length skirts. Historian Matthew Green uncovers a quite different scene in the sordid story of Holywell St, 19th-century London's epicentre of erotica and smut. more
![Frankenstein, the Baroness, and the Climate Refugees of 1816](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/frankenstein-the-baroness-and-the-climate-refugees-of-1816/People_eating_grass_in_famine_Switzerland.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Frankenstein, the Baroness, and the Climate Refugees of 1816
It is two hundred years since "The Year Without a Summer", when a sun-obscuring ash cloud — ejected from one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history — caused temperatures to plummet the world over. Gillen D’Arcy Wood looks at the humanitarian crisis triggered by the unusual weather, and how it offers an alternative lens through which to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a book begun in its midst. more
![George Washington at the Siamese Court](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/george-washington-at-the-siamese-court/Prince_Vichaichan-copy.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
George Washington at the Siamese Court
Keen to appear outward-looking and open to Western culture, in 1838 the Second King of Siam bestowed upon his son a most unusual name. Ross Bullen explores the curious case of “Prince George Washington”, a 19th-century Siamese prince. more
![Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/cat-pianos-sound-houses-and-other-imaginary-musical-instruments/19046217944_f01db7df03_o.png?w=600&h=1200)
Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments
Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson, curators of the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, explore the wonderful history of made-up musical contraptions, including a piano comprised of yelping cats and Francis Bacon's 17th-century vision of experimental sound manipulation. more
![Forgotten Failures of African Exploration](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/forgotten-failures-of-african-exploration/africaexploration-thumb.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Forgotten Failures of African Exploration
Dane Kennedy reflects on two disastrous expeditions into Africa organised by the British in the early-19th century, and how their lofty ambitions crumbled before the implacable realities of the continent. more
![When Chocolate was Medicine: Colmenero, Wadsworth, and Dufour](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/when-chocolate-was-medicine-colmenero-wadsworth-and-dufour/16375757942_ae860d580c_o.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
When Chocolate was Medicine: Colmenero, Wadsworth, and Dufour
Chocolate has not always been the common confectionary we experience today. When it first arrived from the Americas into Europe in the 17th century it was a rare and mysterious substance, thought more of as a drug than as a food. Christine Jones traces the history and literature of its reception. more
![Julia Pastrana: A “Monster to the Whole World”](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/julia-pastrana-a-monster-to-the-whole-world/pastrana-thumb.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Julia Pastrana: A “Monster to the Whole World”
Julia Pastrana, a woman from Mexico born with hypertrichosis, became one of the most famous human curiosities of the 19th century, exhibited the world over as a "bearded lady" while both alive and dead. Bess Lovejoy explores her story and how it was only in 2013, 153 years after her passing, that she was finally laid to rest. more
![Illustrations of Madness: James Tilly Matthews and the Air Loom](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/illustrations-of-madness-james-tilly-matthews-and-the-air-loom/airloom-THUMB1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Illustrations of Madness: James Tilly Matthews and the Air Loom
Mike Jay recounts the tragic story of James Tilly Matthews, a former peace activist of the Napoleonic Wars who was confined to London's notorious Bedlam asylum in 1797 for believing that his mind was under the control of the “Air Loom” — a terrifying machine whose mesmeric rays and mysterious gases were brainwashing politicians and plunging Europe into revolution, terror, and war. more
![Piracy at the Old Bailey](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/piracy-at-the-old-bailey/pirate-thumb1.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Ben Merriman presents a selection of piracy cases from the proceedings of London's Old Bailey. Although a few live up to the swashbuckling heists of stereotype, many reveal the surprisingly everyday nature of the maritime crimes brought before the court, including cases involving an argument over chickens and the stealing of a captain's hats. more
![Picturing Pyrotechnics](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/picturing-pyrotechnics/14504355655_a853a2d216_c.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
Simon Werrett explores how artists through the ages have responded to the challenge of representing firework displays, from the highly politicised and allegorical renderings of the early modern period to Whistler's impressionistic Nocturne in Black and Gold. more
![John L. Sullivan Fights America](https://the-public-domain-review.imgix.net/essays/john-l-sullivan-fights-america/sullivan-thumb.jpg?w=600&h=1200)
John L. Sullivan Fights America
In 1883, the Irish-American heavy-weight boxing champion John L. Sullivan embarked on an unprecedented coast-to-coast tour of the United States offering a prize to any person who could endure four rounds with him in the ring. Christopher Klein tells of this remarkable journey and how the railroads and the rise of the popular press proved instrumental in forging Sullivan into America's first sports superstar. more