The mad Victorian scrapbook

Die zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870, unter Führung des Kapitän Karl Koldewey, etc. [Edited by Alexander Georg Mosle und Georg Albrecht. With plates and maps.] (1873) — *Die zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870, unter Führung des Kapitän Karl Koldewey, etc. [Edited by Alexander Georg Mosle und Georg Albrecht. With plates and maps.]* (1873)

Following the release of one million free-to-use images from the British Library, extracted automatically from digitised copies of nineteenth century, there has been an astonishing reaction worldwide. Well over 50 million visits have been made top the British Library’s Flickr pages, and more than just visiting people have been identifying, tagging, blogging and sharing those images in a happy orgy of knowledge sharing.

In the spirit of this, and as a follow-up to my previous post on the initiative, here’s a selection of some of the images that have caught my eye while browsing. There’s no particular theme to them – some are curious, some outlandish, some are beautiful, some are polar, some are by favourite artists (Phil May, Lancelot Speed), some are simply typical of their age.

The links take you to more information about the publications, other images from that publication, and other images available from the same publication year.