Everybody's Libraries

“The art of the murderer… is the same as the art of the magician,” is a line in John Dickson Carr’s first novel It Walks by Night. It expresses the spirit of this book, and of many of the later mysteries Carr wrote over a long, prolific career. Carr was famous in the Golden Age for his locked-room mysteries, where, as in a magic trick, the question “who did it?” is often less puzzling than the question “how did they do it?” This book’s US copyright unlocks in 25 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

The 1930 Gershwin musical Girl Crazy made stars of Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers, but by 1975, critic Lehman Engel called it “unrevivable” in its original form. The original script may be badly dated, but the songs, including “Embraceable You”, “But Not for Me”, and “I Got Rhythm” have had much more staying power. In 1992, Ken Ludwig thoroughly reworked the show into Crazy for You, which also became a big hit. In 26 days, we’ll all get to go Crazy in our own way. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

There’s the 1980 we know from memory and history, and there’s the 1980 of Just Imagine, where people have names like “J-21”, need permits to marry, and travel in both dirigibles and Mars rockets. For Wonder Stories, the movie, 27 days away from the public domain, was “for those who do not take their science fiction too seriously”, and the mix of futuristic setting with already-dated vaudeville bits was a box-office bomb. But the Oscar-nominated visuals remain striking. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

By 1930, the Harlem Renaissance was undeniably a major force in American culture. While to many the rising visibility of New York Black artists might seem like “a miracle straight out of the skies”, James Weldon Johnson wrote that it was a long time coming. His Black Manhattan tells the story of Black New Yorker’s lives and artistic creations from 17th century New Amsterdam through the Great Migration and the Jazz Age. Johnson’s book joins the public domain in 28 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

"I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance"

Ogden Nash had tried to make a living teaching, selling bonds, and writing ad copy. But after he sent some satirical lines to The New Yorker, the magazine offered him a job. Nash’s verse debuted there in 1930, the start of a long career of humor and wordplay. His earliest published poems, including the couplet above, join the public domain in 29 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“Destry Rides Again and Again and Again” quipped John D. Weaver in a 1963 article that uses Max Brand’s character as a symbol of western cliches. By then Destry’s story, first serialized in 1930 in Western Story Magazine as “Twelve Peers”, had multiple adaptations, but the best-known had little to do with Brand’s novel, a tale of Destry’s revenge and repentance after a stacked jury wrongly convicts him. The original Destry Rides Again joins the public domain in 30 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

The Public Domain Review has begun its own #PublicDomainDayCountdown to 2026, featuring works and authors joining the public domain in countries around the world.

It leads off with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a sprawling family drama set in his Yoknapatawpha County that joins the public domain in the US in 31 days. With 15 different characters narrating in stream-of-consciousness style, it’s not the easiest book to get into. Holly at Nut Free Nerd writes why the book’s worth the effort.

The Fleischer Studios found success in 1930 with a series of cartoons starring Bimbo, a rascally anthropomorphic dog. But when a curvaceous human with some canine features sang “I Have to Have You” in Dizzy Dishes, both Bimbo and movie audiences fell hard for her. Betty Boop went on to star in over 100 cartoons, with multiple makeovers prompted in part by censors, as Emily Wishingrad chronicles in Smithsonian. Her first appearances join the public domain in 32 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Evadne Price was asked to write a lighthearted spoof of All Quiet on the Western Front, but went a different way after reading the diary of a woman ambulance driver in France. Not So Quiet…Stepdaughters of War pulls no punches describing people put into the meat-grinder of war by those comfortably far from danger. Lucy Scholes calls her feminist novel, joining the US public domain in 33 days, “a shattering denunciation of the jingoism that kept the war machine turning.” #PublicDomainDayCountdown

“Georgia on my mind” has a long and legendary history. While some say the song’s “Georgia” was composer Hoagy Carmichael’s sister, it’s now generally understood to be the state, particularly since Georgia’s own Ray Charles recorded it. His version was made Georgia’s official state song.

Another legend says Carmichael voluntarily paid royalties to lyricist Paul Gorrell after he was left off the copyright, which ends in 34 days. But I found both names on the 1930 record. #PublicDomainDayCountdown