Welcome to the Public Domain, 1925!

January 04, 2021

Collage of covers and posters of creative works that entered the public domain in 2021
Collage by Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works published in 1925 entered the U.S. public domain, opening up a treasure trove of books, movies, and music compositions* for use by anyone without need for permission or a fee.

Perhaps most notable among these works is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which can now be adapted, remixed, and built upon by anyone.** Other works of note include the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, films including Harry Lewis's The Freshman and The Merry Widow, and music by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, the "Mother of Blues" and subject of the 2020 film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Below is a list of novels and books from the BC Libraries catalogue that have entered the public domain:

 

 

A great resource to learn more about the public domain is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University - check out their article on Public Domain Day 2021, which provided the inspiration for this blog post! Great resources for finding free online copies of works in the public domain include the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books

Happy reading (and watching, and creating)!

 


 

* Note that only music compositions from 1925 have entered the public domain this year. Subsequent audio recordings of these compositions may still be under copyright, and audio recordings from 1925 aren't scheduled to enter the public domain until 2026.

** In fact, the novelist Micheal Farris Smith is scheduled to publish his novel Nick, a prequel to The Great Gatsby telling the story of Nick Carraway's life, on Jan. 5, 2021!

*** The original German text has passed into the public domain, not the English translation. 

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