Copyright-free images

The British Library have made available over one million images which are copyright free. As a blogger I am always interested in accessing copyright free images. There is no doubt that illustrations add a lot to a page of text, however eloquent the words might be. So I thought I'd give this week's blog post over to sharing the links with you and pasting up a few of my favourites (not that I have had a chance to look at all one million, you understand!)

All the images are from the 17th, 18th and 19th Century so copyright is not a problem. They have been loosely arranged into themes. There is a section of Highlights from which I have selected a Japanese illustration.

From the section entitled book covers I have chosen The Adventures of George Washington Pratt which I was amused to note was on sale for 1/-. (That's 'one shilling' for you post-decimilsation kids which is a mere 5p in today's money.) 

I was surprised to see a whole section on cycling and have chosen the only type of bike that I would feel safe on. (I may have mentioned before that I have absolutely no sense of balance!)

The section on comic art had me bemused. Humour has certainly become more sophisticated, although I suspect I know what the question to this punch line was:

There's a section on ships and one on illustrated lettering but I thought I'd share one more section with you and that is children's book illustration. This is the sort of image that would have fuelled my childhood nightmares:

Ok, who is going to be the first person to provide the first part of the 'ajar' joke?

If you go and look at the images and find some really exciting ones then do let me know and you might also know of other copyright-free sites. It would be good to share.

p.s. I'm continuing to research the history of leper windows (see previous post) and hope to blog some more about that very soon.