Everybody's Libraries

“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

Dr. Luella Axtell set up practice with her husband in 1900 Marinette, Wisconsin, and remains a local hero for her public service and advocacy for public health, environmental protection, and women’s rights. She even features in a recent local murder mystery.

Her well-reviewed Grow Thin on Good Food gives diet and exercise advice similar to today’s, avoiding pop culture’s “one weird trick” fads (if not entirely its fat-shaming). It joins the public domain in 35 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Charles Williams is not as well known today as his fellow Inklings CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. But his work influenced theirs, and that of other writers like TS Eliot. The first of his supernatural thrillers, War in Heaven (reviewed here), opens like a detective story with a dead body, and closes like a mystical experience with another one, along the way including Christian themes and a quest focused on an object of great power. It joins the US public domain in 36 days. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Nancy Drew‘s first four mystery stories join the public domain in 37 days. She’s now the star of a multimedia franchise, and subject of a fascinating UMD Libraries exhibit.

Nancy’s true authorship was once its own mystery. Syndicate contracts hid writers’ identities behind the pen name “Carolyn Keene”. A rights dispute in which Harriet Adams claimed sole credit turned up Nancy’s original ghostwriter, Mildred Wirt Benson. Adams’s reaction: “I thought you were dead.” #PublicDomainDayCountdown

W. D. Ross was already known for his scholarly editions of Aristotle when he published his own lasting contribution to philosophy in 1930. The Right and the Good proposed an ethical theory not based on absolute rules or merely on scoring results of one’s actions, but on weighing certain intuitively known “prima facie” duties. In 38 days, the right of the US public to freely copy and reuse Ross’s book will legally outweigh any duty to keep it proprietary. #PublicDomainDayCountdown

Milt Gross was well known to many newspaper readers in the 1920s, with comics like Banana Oil and Nize Baby that skewered hypocrisy and reveled in absurdity. In 1930, he tried his hand at the wordless novel, which had become popular after the success of Lynd Ward’s Gods’ Man (which you may recall from last year’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown). Gross’s He Done Her Wrong is in part a parody of Ward, replacing his dour woodcuts with a much sillier story. It joins the public domain in 39 days.