Everybody's Libraries

Bess Streeter Aldrich’s A Lantern in Her Hand presents its protagonist, Abbie Deal, with as broad a sweep as the North American prairie she lives in. The book tells Abbie’s story from coming west as a child in a covered wagon in 1854 to holding great-grandchildren in the 1920s, and all her plans, hardships, hopes, setbacks and delights in between. The novel was chosen for One Book, One Nebraska in 2009. It was not free online in the US then, but in 19 days it can be. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“Glibness, confidence, a retentive memory enabling its possessor to air easily acquired, sometimes shamelessly pirated, knowledge, can deceive observation at first, but not for long.”

Ernest Dimnet wrote that not about AI chatbots, but about humans. In The Art of Thinking, he urges making time for reflection, being oneself, and finding oneself, to cultivate wiser and more original thought. Once a bestseller, his 1928 book joins the public domain in 20 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point can be read in different ways. You can read it for the ideas the characters discuss. You can read it for the music-like forms used in narrating their interactions (including debate, seduction, betrayal, and murder). Or you can try to work out which of Huxley’s associates inspired which characters. The Modern Library chose this novel as one of the 100 best in English from the 20th century, and it joins the US public domain in 21 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

A novel about a Gullah single mother by the white wife of a plantation owner was a controversial choice for the 1929 Pulitzer Prize. But Scarlet Sister Mary was praised by many white and Black reviewers. W. E. B. Du Bois said author Julia Peterkin “has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth”. And when a South Carolina library refused to carry what it called an “obscene” book, a local newspaper published it as a serial. It joins the public domain in 22 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Mice do it, cats do it,
Little tramps in bowler hats do it,
Let’s do it! Let’s join the public domain!

Cole Porter’s song “Let’s Do It” is well-known, but now rarely sung with its original lyrics. Porter later approved the more familiar “Birds do it” start, replacing one that had ethnic slurs.

The “birds” version will stay copyrighted for a while, but in 23 days the song’s original copyright ends. Then, as in my example rewrite here, we can do it however we like. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Charlie Chaplin won a special Academy Award for The Circus, a silent romantic comedy he wrote, directed, and starred in as his Little Tramp character.

Audiences loved how the film came out, but its production was full of disasters and personal trauma. Chaplin put it aside for years, but he added a musical soundtrack in the 1960s. That version will remain copyrighted, but we can run the 1928 silent version of The Circus as we like once it joins the public domain in 24 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Louis Ginzburg, a Talmudic scholar who wrote hundreds of articles for the Jewish Encyclopedia, published two significant works in 1928. One was his last volume of notes for The Legends of the Jews, a collection of lore that he had begun publishing in 1909. The other was Students, Scholars and Saints, a collection of articles and lectures for Jewish and Christian audiences on the history of Jewish thought and culture. Both join the public domain in 25 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

The NIU Libraries just completed a project to scan old dime novels and story papers published by Street & Smith in the 19th and 20th centuries. As they note, Street & Smith outlasted the dime novel era, and published (and had copyrights renewed on) pulp fiction magazines well into the 20th century. In 27 days, 1928 issues of many of their titles, including Detective Story Magazine, Love Story Magazine, The Popular Magazine, and Wild West Weekly, join the public domain. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“What in the world, Wimsey, are you doing in this Morgue?” Lord Peter is asked at the start of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Unknown to him, someone sitting in the club has indeed recently died. Miss Bates writes “everything is precariously tottering on the edge of tragedy” in this detective novel, as club members try in vain to keep up appearances in a world irrevocably changed by the Great War. Dorothy L. Sayers’ book joins the US public domain in 28 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown