Free Public Domain Historical Clipart

Image 10735 89 visits

... thrust a leaden bodkin into the head of that image

Image 10736 90 visits

‘... called secretly at the chamber dore’

Image 10737 79 visits

Image 10738 89 visits

‘... compellyd them for to devour the same writte’

Image 10739 83 visits

‘... constructed a pantomime dragon on the pattern of the real article’

Image 10733 87 visits

Image 10732 80 visits

... caused to sytte down and in large wyse to gape

Image 10734 84 visits

... sware ‘gret othes’ and took himself by the hair

Image 10729 78 visits

Image 10731 87 visits

The unfortunate “fowle” was “hurten so sore”’

Image 10730 80 visits

Image 10727 78 visits

Image 10726 81 visits

Image 10728 84 visits

Image 10722 88 visits

‘The broken bough fell on the head of a man standing down below’

Image 10723 88 visits

Image 10724 87 visits

Image 10725 81 visits

‘When a lion looks at you it becomes a leopard’

Image 10716 96 visits

Image 10717 96 visits

Image 10718 78 visits

Image 10719 75 visits

Image 10721 72 visits

Image 10720 66 visits

Image 10709 75 visits

Image 10710 76 visits

Image 10711 82 visits

Image 10712 80 visits

‘... with drawn swords stood in the doorway’

Image 10713 71 visits

Image 10714 68 visits

‘An impromptu entertainment by three minstrels’

Image 10715 81 visits

Image 10704 77 visits

Image 10705 80 visits

‘... fully armed with swords and bucklers’

Image 10706 82 visits

Image 10707 82 visits

‘... gyrd abowte his bodye in iij places with towells and gyrdylls’

Image 10708 77 visits

‘... led through the middle of the city’

Image 10703 74 visits

Fashion 1920's 289 visits

Image 10302 227 visits

Fashion 1920's 276 visits

Fashion 1920's 265 visits

Fashion 1920's 267 visits

Fashionable lady 1920's 238 visits

Walking Dress 217 visits

Woollen Check - 1920's 232 visits

Young Lady - 1920s 230 visits

Young Lady - 1920s 233 visits

Twenty years after Evelina, the novel of femininity took a further step in technique and breadth of design. Miss Austen, who in the last decade of the eighteenth century was writing the novels that were not to be published till after the first decade of the nineteenth, learnt from both her precursors. She was a proper follower of Richardson, but dispensed altogether with the artifice of letters, although the whole of her work is so intimate and particular in expression that it would almost seem to be written in a letter to the reader. 271 visits

Fanny Burney took more material with a lighter hand, stealing away the business of The Tatler, The Spectator, The Citizen of the World, and trying not only to 'draw characters from nature' but also to 'mark the manners of the time.' 286 visits

With an imagination scarcely less opulent than Bunyan's, Defoe, if he had described a dream, would have managed somehow to make it as short-winded and inconsequent as a real one. He was in love with verisimilitude, and delighted in facts for their own sakes. 'To read Defoe,' wrote Charles Lamb, 'is like hearing evidence in a Court of Justice.' No compliment could have pleased him better. 207 visits

This is no insult to Sir Philip Sidney, but only to the rather exorbitant demands of the form he had chosen. His own sonnets vindicate him as a poet, and some of them, even Hazlitt owned, who did not like him, 'are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as the woodbine, and graceful and luxurious like it.' 205 visits

Bunyan's business was the description of a pilgrim's progress through a world thus vividly good and bad. His choice of allegory as a method allowed him to illustrate at the same time the earnestness of his times and their extraordinary clarity of sensation. It was a form ready to his hand. The authorised version of the Bible, published in 1611, its English retaining the savour of a style then out of date, formed at once his writing and his method, as it constituted his education. 'My Bible and Concordance are my only library in my writings.' 183 visits

Out of this general efflorescence were to spring two branches of story-telling different and hostile from the start. The novel was given sex. Richardson had scarcely invented the feminine novel before Fielding and Smollett were at work producing books of a masculinity correspondingly pronounced. Fielding was the first to mark the difference, and Richardson to the end of his life hated him for writing Joseph Andrews. It often happens that one philosopher hates another whose system though less elaborate is obviously founded on a broader basis than his own. Fielding could afford to laugh at Richardson, but Richardson could never laugh at Fielding. 164 visits

Chaucer's was a fairly simple nature. He seems to have taken to Renaissance fashions just as he took to Renaissance learning, without in the least disturbing the solid Englishness of his foundation. He married a Damsell Philippa without letting his marriage interfere with an ideal and unrequited passion like that of Petrarch for Laura. He had Jean de Meung's own reverence for the classics. 201 visits

On the third day, June 3rd, the Royal Prince, bearing the flag of Sir George Ayscue, the largest and heaviest ship in the English fleet, ran on the Galloper shoal, and being threatened by fire-ships, surrended. The ship was burnt, and the crew, including the admiral, were made prisoners. 159 visits

I suppose there are few boys who have not heard of Westminster Abbey, and who do not know that within its ancient and splendid walls the Kings of England are crowned, and the great, the wise, and the brave of every age are buried. But few, perhaps, are aware that the Abbey also contains the oldest and one of the most famous boys' schools in the world. 241 visits

A number of flues concentrated, forms a stack of chimneys, as represented in the engraving. Flues, at a distance from the stack, are conveyed to it either in a horizontal or sloping form, as at A and G. The size of flues generally is nine inches by fourteen inches; a space sufficiently large to convey the smoke, but not large enough to be ascended, except by little children, for the purpose of cleansing them. The plan adopted by the climbing-boy to ascend chimneys is, by pressing his feet, back, and knees against the sides of the flue, by which means he propels or hitches himself up by degrees, having one arm above his head, holding a brush, and the other arm by his side, as described in B. At C the boy is represented as putting his brush out of the top of the chimney-pot, but generally he rattles it with his brush, to satisfy the parties below that he has been to the top. This accomplished, he gradually slides down to the stove or grate. It has frequently occurred, that boys have, either through fear or inattention, got into the form of nose and knees together, as described at E; sometimes they remain in this cramped and painful position for hours before they are liberated, being totally unable to extricate themselves. 364 visits

[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]

543 visits

[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]

500 visits

[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]

480 visits

[The four images are taken from an exact facsimile of the first English treatise on fishing, printed in 1496]

527 visits

he vessel selected for that famous cruise was The Great Balloon of Nassau, then recently built by Mr. Green and representing all that his skill and experience could devise. It was of pear shape, formed of the finest crimson and white silk, “spun, wove and dyed expressly for the purpose,” and comprising when distended a volume of 85,000 cubic feet. From its stout balloon-ring six feet in diameter was suspended a wicker car measuring nine feet long by four wide, having a seat across either end, and a cushioned bottom to serve as a bed, if such should be needed. Across the middle of the car was a plank supporting a windlass for raising or lowering the guide-rope, that is a heavy rope which could be trailed over land, or water, to keep the balloon at a nearly constant level without expenditure of ballast, and to check its speed on landing. This valuable device invented by Mr. Green in 1820, was now to receive adequate trial, which, indeed, formed one of the chief purposes of the cruise. Other paraphernalia of the voyage were food and drink, warm clothing, lamps, trumpets, telescopes, barometers, a quicklime coffee-heater, a grapnel and cable, and a ton of sand ballast in bags. 320 visits

(From the original painting at Hampton Court.) 399 visits

The Embarkation of Henry VIII. from Dover, 1520

Coaches in the Reign of Elizabeth I (From 'Archcæologia.') 577 visits

Image 8122 398 visits

South-east Part of London in the Fifteenth Century, showing the Tower and Wall

(From Pricke's 'South Prospect of London.') 407 visits

Image 8120 469 visits

Sir Francis Drake, in his Forty-third Year

The first theatre was built in 1570. Thirty years after there were seven. The Queen had companies of children to play before her. They were the boys of the choirs of St. Paul's, Westminster, Whitehall, and Windsor. The actors called themselves the servants of some great lord. Lord Leicester, Lord Warwick, Lord Pembroke, Lord Howard, the Earl of Essex, and others all had their company of actors—not all at the same time. The principal Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe 588 visits