Everybody's Libraries

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

Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, who told him that Christians should “live more like Jesus Christ”, practice their religion “without toning it down”, and “find the good” in non-Christian religions. Inspired by this, Jones organized inter-religious conversations described in his Christ at the Round Table, which becomes public domain in 29 days. The Sat Tal Christian Ashram, which he then founded in a similar spirit, continues today. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

If Hollywood lore is to be believed, the biggest hit of 1928 was written as a joke. Given a last-minute plea for a sentimental song for Al Jolson’s upcoming talkie The Singing Fool, Ray Henderson, Buddy DeSylva, and Lew Brown decided to write the corniest song they could. Jolson took “Sonny Boy” to heart, though, and audiences loved his performance. “Sonny Boy” and The Singing Fool were the top-selling song and film that year. Both join the public domain in 30 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

The Nobel Prize for literature often goes to writers near the end of their careers. William Butler Yeats wasn’t done, though, after winning it in 1923. His 1928 collection The Tower includes influential poems like “Sailing to Byzantium” (known for the phrase “no country for old men”), “Leda and the Swan”, and the title poem, named for a home Yeats bought in 1917. The Solitary Walker writes about that tower, and the book, which joins the US public domain in 31 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Though her recording career spanned only 10 years, “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith had a huge influence on American music. This 2019 NPR interview includes parts of her first record, “Downhearted Blues”, with Maureen Mahon’s explanation of how Smith laid the foundations of rock & roll. (The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted her in 1989.)

Smith’s “Downhearted Blues” was the first of several hits she released in 1923. They join the public domain in 32 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Buster Keaton stars as a hapless aspiring newsreel maker with eyes for Marceline Day in The Cameraman, his first film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The National Film Registry made this movie one of its honorees in 2005, calling it “the last of Buster Keaton’s silent comedy classics”.

The Cameraman joins the public domain in 33 days. We’re lucky to have it still around. MGM’s copies were destroyed in a 1965 vault fire, but years later other prints were found elsewhere. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Margaret Mead spent several months in Samoa researching her book Coming of Age in Samoa, a groundbreaking bestseller joining the public domain in 34 days.

After Mead died, her reports of the sex lives of Samoan adolescents were disputed by Derek Freeman, as well as by some Samoans. Samoan cultural norms had shifted notably by that time, though. Mainland American cultural norms have also shifted since 1928, as can be seen with this book and other works featured in our #PublicDomainDayCountdown.

W. E. B. Du Bois, famous for nonfiction like The Souls of Black Folk and The Philadelphia Negro, also wrote fiction. His 1928 novel Dark Princess: A Romance is described by its current publisher as a “novel of sensual love, radical politics, and the quest for racial justice”. That blend of themes got a mixed reception from both Black and white reviewers, but in his 1940 autobiography Du Bois wrote that it was his favorite book. It joins the public domain in 35 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Harvard geologist Kirtley F. Mather was an activist for academic freedom (advocating for teaching evolution and against faculty loyalty oaths) and president of Promoting Enduring Peace. Kennard B. Bork writes in GSA Today that he had a “deep belief in the mutual powers of the scientific endeavor and religious faith”.

He published two books in 1928, Old Mother Earth and Science in Search of God, that express many of his passions. Both join the public domain in 36 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown