From Mayan astrological tables and Mixtec genealogies, to agricultural records and religious rites, the nine-volume Antiquities of Mexico (1831-48) exquisitely reproduced virtually all pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican books in European collections at the time: publicdomainreview.org/collection/ant…

George Washington Williams' *History of the Negro Race in America* (1882–83), a work of millennial scope by a self-taught African-American historian:

For our Curator's Choice series, SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst's Henrik Holm on the making of the Danish painting canon and national identity: buff.ly/2kwohfq

Albrecht Dürer's Triumphal Arch for Emperor Maximilian I (1515) — one of the earliest and finest examples of imperial propaganda — was made by pressing a whopping 195 woodcuts onto 36 sheets of paper, to form a huge 3.57 by 2.95 metre composite print: buff.ly/2wTcwbN

Collection of twenty short "prose-songs" (as the Foreword declares them), from the French writer Marcel Schwob. These surreal, hallucinatory little sketches are Schwob's unique take on 3rd century BCE Greek poet Herodas' then-newly discovered mimes: bit.ly/So1kgP

An "alphabet album", a beautiful book of calligraphy and typographic engraving from 1843 assembled by Joseph-Balthazar Silvestre. Ranging from the old-fashioned to the surprisingly modern looking, from the elegantly unreadable to the crystal clear... publicdomainreview.org/collection/syl…

Born #onthisday in London in 1795, John Polidori. As well as being the long-suffering personal physician to Lord Byron, he is also the creator of the first modern #vampire story: buff.ly/2CsfyJr #OTD

Were public toilet walls the @Twitter of the 18th century? Maximillian Novak on how a little-known book of “latrinalia” offers a unique and fascinating window into Georgian life: buff.ly/39bWhJN

The letter "O" from Joris Hoefnagel's Guide to the Construction of Letters (1595), a work designed to aid and inspire calligraphers. Each letter is surrounded by an array of symbolically charged motifs. More here: buff.ly/2EwTCsZ

A crowned woman in red inside a circle of water and holding a rose-topped caduceus; a representation of a stage in the process of alchemy, ca. 18th century. Buy print here: buff.ly/2CPaV9E

Black square (“and so on to infinity…” inscribed in Latin around its edges) representing the nothingness that was prior to the universe, as pictured by the great occult philosopher Robert Fludd, who himself passed into infinity #onthisday in 1637. buff.ly/3bGU5um #OTD

In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, Iwan Rhys Morus joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizi…

The underside of the Great Water Lily by William Sharp, creator of the very first chromolithograph on American soil. More "lillistrations" here: buff.ly/2mFhUKE

Filippo Balbi, Testa Anatomica, 1854: publicdomainreview.org/collection/tes… Available a a print here: publicdomainreview.org/product/testa-…

Beautiful illustrations of iron interacting with rocks, from the publication of a paper, "On the Disposition of Iron in Variegated Strata", delivered by the botanist and geologist George Maw to the Geological Society on April 22nd 1868: buff.ly/2mX68KZ

After complaints about Timothy Dexter's A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (1797) being entirely devoid of punctuation, in future editions the eccentric businessman supplied a supplemental page so that people “may peper and solt as they please”: publicdomainreview.org/collection/dex…

A few illustrations from William Elliot Griffis’ Korean Fairy Tales (1922). Read the whole book, and see more of its images, here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/kor…

"Having accidentally tasted the dragon's blood, Siegfried becomes able to understand the language of the birds which tells him of Brünnhilde, the fair maiden who sleeps on a fire-encircled rock..." As pictured in The Victrola Book of the Opera (1913): buff.ly/31XmOFJ

#OnThisDay in 1797 the radical philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft died after giving birth to her 2nd daughter (Mary Shelley). Her last book was a fictionalised account of a remarkable journey she undertook to Scandinavia in search of stolen treasure: buff.ly/3tsg9l8 #OTD

Specimens from Phantom Flowers, one of two books published in 1864 on the art of producing skeleton leaves. More in our latest post from Elaine Ayers: publicdomainreview.org/collection/pha…