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Stories

  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

  • Article

Notes upon arrival

In an effort to feel at home back in the country of her birth, poet Bhanu Kapil recognises the small revelations of nature in a chilly UK spring as a way to reconnect.

  • Article

Womb milk and the puzzle of the placenta

A human baby needs milk to survive – and this holds true even before it’s born. Joanna Wolfarth explores “womb milk”, as well as ancient and modern ideas about the placenta.

  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

All stories (4)

Images

  • Sea monsters fighting. Etching by S. Rosa.
  • Sea monsters fighting. Etching by S. Rosa.
  • The tomb effigy of a man accompanied by nereids, marine centaurs and sea monsters. Engraving.
  • Three sea monsters with devils horns and tails attempt to attack a submarine in the form of a condom in which a couple can be seen kissing through the port hole; an AIDS prevention advertisement for families. Colour lithograph, ca. 1997.
  • Hercules rescuing Hesione from a sea-monster. Engraving by B. Picart after C. Le Brun.
  • Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a sea-monster. Engraving by L. Cars, 1728, after F. Lemoine.
  • A carriage or bathing machine drawn by a sea monster is driven below cliffs: the animal inside has its tail caught in one of the rear wheels; the coachmen and two other passengers speak. Soft-ground etching.
  • A woman holding a torch is dragging a woman by her hair, another woman is holding her head in despair at the sight of a one-legged man destroying books and instruments; a woman and a sea monster contemplate the scene. Etching, 16--.
  • A crocodile, a gigantic fish and an animal that eats flying fish. Gouache painting.
  • Two men in a rowing boat are attacked by a giant eel. Drawing by W. E. Wigfull, 1908.
All images (33)

Catalogue

All works (86)