Although largely forgotten today, exercise by club swinging was all the rage in the 19th century. Daniel Elkind explores the rise of the phenomenon in the US, and how such efforts to keep trim and build muscle were inextricably entwined with the history of colonialism, immigration, and capitalist culture.

We made you a colouring book to help you through these strange times, featuring works by Hokusai, Albrecht Dürer, Virginia Frances Sterrett, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Quick update as to how the coronavirus crisis is impacting The Public Domain Review.

Bills of mortality for the year 1665 in London, recording the number of plague dead, as well as other causes of mortality.

A thoroughly romantic amateur English botanist’s catalogue of more than 400 plants and flowers that once grew in profusion on the Roman Colosseum.

Depictions of plague doctors in the bird mask and floor-length cloak first developed in France during the early 17th century.

The California Gold Rush transformed the landscape and population of the United States. It also introduced a new figure into American life and the American imagination — the effete Eastern urbanite who travels to the Wild West in quest of his fortune. Alex Andriesse examines how this figure fares in three mid-nineteenth-century comic books.

Three volumes of anecdotes about painters and other artists collected by an enterprising American dentist, author, and connoisseur of the arts.

Two PSA films featuring the multi-talented director, actor, doctor, and hypochondriac Richard Massingham.

Meticulous illustrations from an atlas of animal bones, including those of the tiny squirrel and the tall giraffe, the domesticated camel and the extinct giant ground sloth.