Tag Archives: PublicDomainDayCountdown

Twenty Years at Hull-House is Jane Addams‘s germinal account of the settlement house movement she helped found, supporting immigrants and low-income urban residents. In 1930, Addams published her memoir of the next 20 years, describing her further involvement in Hull-House, … Continue reading →

Few humor books from 1930 still get laughs from many people now, but 1066 and All That does. W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman don’t just send up English history: they also satirize how history is often taught and … Continue reading →

This blog’s #PublicDomainDayCountdown focuses on works joining the public domain in the United States, but there are also many other works joining it in other countries. Many are described in Wikipedia and in the Public Domain Review. There is some … Continue reading →

There’s something magical about Swallows and Amazons. It’s not anything supernatural or melodramatic, but as the Vacuous Wastrel notes, the book enchants readers with three worlds: the world of lake and islands that six children explore remarkably independently, the world … Continue reading →

Aaron Moss’s roundup of arrivals to the public domain in 2026 lists over 150 works newly out of copyright, and discusses how we can’t always reuse the versions we think we can of some public domain stories, songs, and characters. … Continue reading →

“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 … Continue reading →

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”, … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

“I would live all my life in nonchalance and insoucianceWere 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 … Continue reading →