Everybody's Libraries

The 1928 musical Good Boy is nearly entirely forgotten now, but one of its songs was a breakout hit. Helen Kane performed “I Wanna Be Loved by You” in the show, and the song was later famously taken up by cartoon character Betty Boop (who was modeled after Kane), and a long list of later singers. One its more memorable later performances was by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Some Like It Hot.

Both the song and the musical it came from join the public domain in 47 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“The history of the American musical theater,” wrote Miles Kreuger, “is divided quite simply into two eras: everything before Show Boat, and everything after Show Boat.”

We’ve featured Show Boat in our #PublicDomainDayCountdown before. The Edna Ferber novel the show was based on joined the public domain in 2022; many of its songs joined the public domain this year. The full script and score, published in 1928 a few months after the show’s December 1927 debut, becomes public domain in 48 days.

“For generations of women– and men– on their own difficult passages to sexual self-discovery, The Well of Loneliness became a beacon” writes Hephzibah Anderson on Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel, which joins the US public domain in 7 weeks. One of the first modern novels openly on lesbian relationships published for a wide audience, it was both groundbreaking and very much of its time. Its banning could also once be seen as a phenomenon of the past, but today not so much. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

I was interested to scroll through the Goodreads reviews of Robert Nathan’s The Bishop’s Wife, a book not as well known or as much loved as its film adaptations (the 1947 movie of the same name, and the 1996 movie The Preacher’s Wife).

While the darker story didn’t satisfy many readers who loved the films, some readers saw value in it, as clearly did the film adapters. When it goes public domain in 50 days, more will have opportunities to adapt it or enjoy it as-is. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“My experiences in the First World War have haunted me all my life and for many days I have, it seemed, lived in that world rather than this.”

Edmund Blunden wrote that over 40 years after he published Undertones of War. Readers like Ian Brinton find its economical prose, focusing on the mundane experiences of soldiers with a keen implied sense of the tragedy and waste of the war, one of the most memorable accounts of that world. It joins the US public domain in 51 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

Edward Bernays so described propaganda in his influential book of that title. I hope more use the book as a guide to resist it than as a how-to manual when it joins the public domain in 52 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Not everyone was a fan of The House at Pooh Corner. An infamous review of the book ran in the Constant Reader column of the October 20, 1928 issue of The New Yorker, in which Dorothy Parker pronounced “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up”.

The New Yorker ran many pieces in 1928 by Parker and other members of the sardonic Algonquin Round Table, as well as by other long-read writers like James Thurber and EB White. All of its 1928 issues will join the public domain in 53 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Everyone’s lives are disrupted in The House at Pooh Corner. Newcomer Tigger bounces routines off-kilter; Owl’s house falls; Piglet moves in with Pooh; Christopher Robin goes away to school. Ryan Britt writes “Pooh was not intended to be… on an endless series of profitable ‘expositions'” and that the book’s end is “one of the most devastatingly perfect endings ever”. In 54 days, its US copyright ends, and AA Milne & EH Shepard’s 100 Aker Wood will all be public domain. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Victor Yarros wrote of Charles Beard’s The American Party Battle “Why do parties survive issues and die morally while pretending to carry on?… [Those] who would like to know what has happened to republicanism or democracy are confidently referred to Professor Beard’s little volume.”

55 days before the book joins our public domain, Americans can shape the future of republicanism and democracy by voting in today’s state and local elections. Let’s make the most of it. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

In Grace Taber Hallock’s fantasy The Boy Who Was, Nino, a boy given eternal youth by the Sirens, relates what he’s seen and done in his Italian coastal town over thousands of years, from the time of Odysseus to 1927. The book, with illustrations by Harrie Wood, was one of the Newbery Honor books of 1929.

When this book joins the public domain in 56 days, we’ll be able not only to freely read it, but freely write further adventures of Nino to and beyond the present. #PublicDomainDayCountdown