In 1926, Henry Beston began a two-week stay at a cottage he’d put up on Cape Cod, but “as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go.” Beston’s notes from an eventual year at the cottage became The Outermost House, a classic memoir of nature and solitude joining the public domain in 15 days. The sea claimed his house in 1978, but others like it remain available for artists’ retreats. #PublicDomainDayCountdown