In what's been another strange and disrupted year for many, we thank you all so much for reading and gifting us your attention. From the 57 collection posts, 19 essays, and 3 conjecture pieces that we had the pleasure to publish, here's a rundown of the ten most read. ...
In this early version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we find illustrations drawn by the author Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll. Read More »
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Among the “human curiosities” in P. T. Barnum’s American Museum was a supposed escapee from an Ottoman harem, a figure marketed as both the pinnacle of white beauty and an exoticised other. Betsy Golden Kellem investigates the complex of racial and cultural stereotypes that made the Circassian beauty such a sideshow spectacle. Read More »
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What’s wondrous about browsing the images of snowball fights gathered here is how little changes across centuries and continents. Read More »
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April marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Baudelaire’s birth, the French poet famous for his descriptions of the flâneur: a man of the crowd, who thrived in the metropolis’ multitude. Following Baudelaire through 19th-century Paris, Matthew Beaumont discovers a parallel archetype — the convalescent hero of modernity — who emerges from the sickbed into city streets with a feverish curiosity. Read More »
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Yoga is now everywhere in the West. For some, it is connected to an ancient, ethical philosophy, “a way the sacred can come into life”, according to Stephen H. Phillips. For others, it has become a glorified stretching routine, a warm-up to be completed while decked out in athleisure garbs. The remarkable 19th-century images collected here come from India and concern hatha yoga, the yoga of physical discipline. Read More »
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Ox-faced children, elderly women sprouting horns, and cloven minds — all features attributed to Edward Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox. Introducing us to the original anti-vaxxers, Erica X Eisen explores the “vacca” in the first-ever vaccine: its bovine origins and the widespread worry that immunity came with beastly side effects. Read More »
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Beautiful diagrams exploring the nervous system from two pioneers in the field — important depictions of the previously invisible branchings underlying our every thought and gesture.Read More »
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The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business, awash with blubber, blood, and the cruel destruction of life. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too. Jessica Boyall explores the rich vein of illustration running through the logbooks and journals of Nantucket whalers. Read More »
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What if chairs had the ability to shift our state of consciousness, transporting the imagination into distant landscapes and ecstatic experiences, both religious and erotic? In an essay about the British and American fascination with rocking chairs and upholstery springs in the 19th century, Hunter Dukes discovers how simple furniture technologies allowed armchair travelers to explore worlds beyond their own. Read More »
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These stunning illustrations hail from a number of catalogues for Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, published by C. T. Brock and Company, the oldest fireworks manufacturer in the United Kingdom. Read More »
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