Reading in Public
@readinginpublic.bsky.social
Adventures in the Public Domain. I am an avid reader with eclectic interests and I hold an MS-LIS, which honestly lends no credence to this venture except I'm good at finding things... Also at https://ko-fi.com/knightswriter
"Friendship books" were the #Facebook of the 17th and 18th centuries (without the ads and data mining). Here's a fine example of one begun in 1795 by the aunt of the poet Felicia Dorothea Browne: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-friendship-book-of-anne-wagner-1795-1834 #FriendshipDay
"The Duck quaketh... The Wolf howleth" — from what many consider to be the first picture book for children, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658). More in our essay here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-the-image-of-god-john-comenius-and-the-first-children-s-picture-book
A post from last year about Yone Noguchi, a Japanese novelist and poet.
Yone Noguchi: The Man Who Brought Haiku to the West
readinginpublic.leaflet.pub
A Walk Through Homer’s Odyssey: A Guide to the Epic Before Seeing Christopher Nolan’s Film
A Walk Through Homer’s Odyssey: A Guide to the Epic Before Seeing Christopher Nolan’s Film
You're gearing up to see Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, but you haven't read the Homeric work. Or you read it so long ago that it feels like you’ve never read it at all. No worries.
openculture.com
You have my sworde. And my bowe. And myne axe. And my Taco Bell.
I am working on revamping my blog--first step is that I am converting it to a Leaflet publication from Ko-Fi. I'll be adding posts singly, more or less, and then adding as I get new ideas.
E.F. Benson
readinginpublic.leaflet.pub
Odd Showers (1870) — An odd little book about frogs and fishes raining down from the sky and the reasons why they do so: https://buff.ly/3o3tHCg
Shores of the Polar Sea (1878) is a mixture of intimate journal entries, miscellaneous engravings, and sixteen chromolithographs — a unique, often surreal, retelling of life on the ice as experienced during the British Arctic Expedition: publicdomainreview.org/collection/s...
Early concept art for the Death Star... From a 15th-century catalogue of designs for a variety of fantastic and often impossible inventions. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dreams-of-an-inventor-in-1420 #MayThe4thBeWithYou #MayThe4th
The first mass-produced book to deviate from a rectilinear format, at least in the United States, is thought to be this beautiful 1863 edition of Red Riding Hood, published by Boston-based publisher Louis Prang. Leaf through its person-shaped pages here: https://buff.ly/2xngjiv
I got distracted for a while writing some other things, but here's a new post! ko-fi.com/post/Johnny-...
Johnny Appleseed–The Truth Revealed!!
Reading in Public published a post on Ko-fi
ko-fi.com
Happy #MayDay and #InternationalWorkersDay! This poster by Dutch artist Jan Toorop was for the Hague's 1898 National Woman’s Labour Exhibition, which had the goal to improve women's wages and working conditions. More posters from Toorop here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...
Our first PDR Press Mini: The perfect pocket Proust — the spellbinding opening section of Swann’s Way, including the most famous conjunction of cake and tea in 20th-c fiction. Available for 25% off in our pre-sale (until April 29), along with 2 other titles publicdomainreview.org/shop/pdr-pre...
The first person to discover a link between increased levels of CO2 and #globalwarming was a New Yorker named Eunice Newton Foote. Read her 1856 paper, and how she went unacknowledged for more than a century, here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/f... #earthday #climatechange
It's #BatAppreciationDay! Here's Plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature (1904). Focusing mainly on marine animals, the bat is one of the only mammals to feature in the book: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ernst-haeckel-s-bats-1904 #bats #onthisday #otd
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, "Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night." You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along. -G. Brooks
The Lord's Prayer in what is now known as Plains Indian Sign Language or Plains Sign Talk — a sign language that operated as a lingua franca between tribes across N. America. From Lewis Francis Hadley's Indian Sign Talk (1893). More in our latest post: publicdomainreview.org/collection/i...
Susan Schulten on the pioneering work of Emma Willard (1787–1870), a leading feminist educator whose innovative maps of time laid the groundwork for the charts and graphics of today: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/emma-willard-maps-of-time #InternationalWomensDay #IWD2026
Celebrate #WorldBookDay with a look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the “modern” book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914
Booke, booke, Reade a booke, Reade anothir booke, Reade a large amounte of bookes - Bookes are freakinge awesome
For March: A trip back to my first post, on women authors writing about nature, featuring Gene Stratton-Porter, whose books I've come to enjoy quite a bit! #booksky #womenauthors ko-fi.com/Post/Women-W...
Women Writers and Nature: Inaugural Post!!
Reading in Public published a post on Ko-fi
ko-fi.com
After taking a break last month (and most of this month) I have finally published a new article about nushi, the spirits of ponds, lakes and rivers in #JapaneseFolklore. I've included several folktales, some yokai, and plenty of #JapaneseArt. I hope you enjoy it. open.substack.com/pub/curiouso...
Water Spirits in Japanese Folklore
Tales of nushi in ponds, lakes and rivers
open.substack.com
'Enoshima' from the series 'Thirty-six Views of Mt.Fuji' - Utagawa Hiroshige, 1858. #ToriiTuesday #ukiyoe #JapaneseArt
How Japanese Masters Turn Sand Into Swords: The Art of Traditional Sword Making from Start to Finish
How Japanese Masters Turn Sand Into Swords: The Art of Traditional Sword Making from Start to Finish
We made sand think: this phrase is used from time to time to evoke the particular technological wonders of our age, especially since artificial intelligence seems to be back on the slate of possibilit...
openculture.com
