Everybody's Libraries

An odd assortment of itinerant and not-so-itinerant lodgers come together in a spa town boarding house in E. F. Benson’s Paying Guests. Some are strangers, some chafe under family ties, and some would like to form new ties. Stuckinabook’s review describes the action as “a relatively amiable, never-ending tussle for dignity.” Those traveling and lodging with others this holiday season might sympathize. The novel joins the US public domain in 35 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.” So begins Protestant theologian H. Richard Niebuhr‘s first book, where he argues the proliferation of Christian denominations has less to do with theological difference than with attachment to class distinctions, racial hierarchy, and nationalism. A plea for unity, and for mission overcoming division, The Social Sources of Denominationalism will be free to all in 36 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Many of Emily Dickinson‘s poems remain under copyright more than 130 years after she died. With some of her manuscripts held by her sister, and others by her brother’s mistress, both camps filtered what they were willing to publish and how it would be presented. In 1929, Further Poems revealed more than 150 verses Emily’s late sister had withheld from print. Many are poems of love, some mystical, some perhaps more earthly. They greet the public domain in 37 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

This year’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown features several detectives’ debuts. One of the biggest detective franchises that began in 1929 is Ellery Queen, which is both a pen name first used by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, and the name of the detective they created. Ellery Queen’s first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery, joins the public domain in 38 days. The book was followed by many more stories, as well as films, comics, and radio and TV series. His namesake magazine also continues to this day.

The all-Technicolor movie musical Gold Diggers of Broadway was the third highest-grossing film of 1929, ran in theaters until 1939, and is now partly lost. One reel that resurfaced in the 1980s included a lavish performance of “Tip-Toe Through the Tulips”, a song introduced in that film. The song’s performers since then have included Tiny Tim on Laugh-In and various Muppets in early Sesame Street episodes. Film and song tiptoe into the public domain in 39 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown