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    Art from ‘Twas the Night before Christmas: A Visit from St. Nicholas (1912)

    This book is an illustrated version of the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by (probably) Clement Clarke Moore (see Wikipedia). This version was published in 1912 by Houghton Mifflin, and was illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith. There’s some really nice art in this book, so I downloaded scans from the Internet Archive, cropped them, and reuploaded them here to share! This particular edition of the book, including its illustrations, are in the public domain now, so you can use them to make your own art, make little prints for your house (Christmas decorations, perhaps?) and so on. Click…

  • Pepper Jam Sandwich Recipe from 1922

    This recipe comes from For Luncheon and Supper Guests by Alice Bradley, published 1922 by Whitcomb & Barrows. It’s a series of 10 menus meant for small dinner parties, automobile picnics (road trip food!), lunch rooms, etc. and it’s very well written– it even has an introductory section explaining how to prepare everything ahead of time for the party, where to get your ingredients and how to order them, the pantry staples you should have at hand, and so on. I’ve pulled a selection of recipes from the book and will be sharing them here on the blog, but if…

  • 30+ FREE Books: Women’s Historical Diaries

    This is the third of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read. This specific post focuses on the following: Be sure to also check out 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World for more books! I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books on the “diaries” keyword pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! My hope is that putting these lists together will help you discover…

  • 100+ More FREE Books About Women Traveling the World

    This is the second of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read. This specific post focuses on the following: Be sure to also check out 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World for more books! I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books within the various travel-related subject pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! While you can find a lot just going through the main…

  • 101+ FREE Books About Women Traveling the World

    This is the first of several posts linking to various public domain books on interesting topics! Public domain books are ones that have fallen out of copyright, and so they’re available for free to download and read. This specific post focuses on the following: I’ve put this list together myself (no AI!!) by going through many (MANY) pages of books within the various travel-related subject pages. I even hand-coded the links myself! While you can find a lot just going through the main “travel” genre page, I noticed that some books get sorted under specific location subjects or even just…

  • 23 Wizard of Oz Illustrations by W.W. Denslow (1900) – Chapter Headers

    This is the second of several posts highlighting W.W. Denslow’s illustrations for the 1900 edition of L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz. The first post focused on full-page color illustrations, while this one features the chapter “header” pages. These show up at the start of every chapter and are an entire page in themselves. While they’re not full-color, they do have SOME color, usually either red, green or yellow. To make this collection: I downloaded each image individually, lightly edited them (keeping the vintage aged paper look), then re-uploaded them here. I had to shrink the quality a…

  • Cafe Parfait Alexandria (Coffee Mousse) Recipe from 1913

    Here’s another interesting recipe from the book Ultra Select Dishes for Afternoon Teas, published in 1913. It’s a collection of fancy recipes from high end hotels, and this particular recipe comes from Charles A. Frey, chef at the Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles, California. It’s basically a coffee mousse dessert, simple but very delicious. Original Recipe CAFE PARFAIT ALEXANDRIA Make a very strong coffee and pour over one pound of cube sugar. Dissolve the same over a slow fire, but do not let it boil, until it reaches twenty-eight degrees. Beat eight yolks of eggs in a kettle which is…

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    Illustrations from The Princess and the Goblin (1920 edition)

    The Princess and the Goblin is a children’s fantasy book written by Scottish author George MacDonald in 1872. It’s one of my favorite books, highly recommend picking it up if you haven’t read it already! This edition, published in 1920 by David McKay Company, was illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, one of my favorite artists from the early 20th century. I’ve used a scan from the Internet Archive to pull her illustrations for the book out into individual images and then uploaded them here for you all to enjoy. As they’re in the public domain, you can use them for…

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    Illustrations from Rose Fyleman’s The Rainbow Cat (1923)

    The Rainbow Cat is a children’s fantasy book written by British author Rose Fyleman, published originally in 1922. This edition was published by the George H. Doran company in New York in 1923. The art in this book was by American artist Thelma Cudlipp (listed as Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor on the book itself). I like the balance of clear lines and delicate colors, and especially how cute the cats are! These images were collected from a PDF scan provided by the Library of Congress. They aren’t the clearest, unfortunately, but I thought they were very charming and I wanted to…

  • Author Rose Fyleman Book Index

    Rose Amy Fyleman (née Feilmann, 6 March 1877 – 1 August 1957) was an English writer and poet, noted for her works on fairies for children. Her 1917 poem “There are fairies at the bottom of our garden” was set to music by English composer Liza Lehmann. (Source: Wikipedia) I think she’s one of those authors that’re maybe more popular in her own country– which is probably why I hadn’t heard of her before my research in Victorian/Edwardian fairy tale books, as I’m from the US and she was British! Of course, that means she’s a perfect fit for the library…