It’s (almost) Public Domain Day!
In 2019, for the first time in over two decades, a new crop of literary work entered the public domain: everything first published in the United States in 1923. (Don’t forget the secret public domain books, either.) In 2020, books by E.M. Forster, Edna Ferber, and Edith Wharton became available for remixing. 2021 brought us everything published in 1925, “the greatest year for books,” including, of course, The Great Gatsby (yes, a sequel was published immediately, with plenty more in the works). In 2022, notably, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh passed through the veil, leading, inevitably and unfortunately, to this. Last year, To the Lighthouse entered the public domain, though to date nothing murdery has been done with it (that we know of).
So what’s on the table this year? Though copyright laws differ from country to country, on January 1st, 2024, books that were published in 1928 will enter the public domain in the United States. Here’s a selection of the most interesting:
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (the original play)
Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train
W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess
Robert Frost, West-Running Brook
Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (the oldest American picture book still in print!)
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
Nella Larsen, Quicksand
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (the original, unexpurgated version)
A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (meaning we’re soon to get a Tigger-themed sequel to the aforementioned horror flick)
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (but only in the original German)
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
W.B. Yeats, The Tower
Also of note? The earliest version of Mickey Mouse, as he first appeared in Steamboat Willie, will enter the public domain in 2024. Gird yourselves.
https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea77d180f243d6532f731k3x9n.hlo/0d87a5cd
