Quote from full announcement http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-fi...
We have released over a million imageshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibraryonto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images
were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsofthttp://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-19th-Century-Book-Digitisation-Project-343.aspxwho then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain. The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.
Flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary Example of image http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11307195524/ Example of all images from a book http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/tags/sysnum002660292 Stuff for coders https://github.com/BL-Labs/imagedirectory
So... :-)