I try to post something about this topic every year. This year is no exception.
In the United States, under U.S. copyright law, works published in 1930 and earlier are now in the public domain. One can publish them or use them without securing copyright permission. In case you are wondering about the specifics, the Copyright Term Extension Act (passed in 1998) gave works published from 1923 through 1977 a 95-year term limit. They enter the public domain on January 1 after the conclusion of the 95th year.
This law applies not only to books but to everything under copyright, like films and music.
Notable titles are on this year’s list:
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version)
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (in the original German, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (a relatively unknown science fiction novel. Some suggest that C. S. Lewis wrote his space trilogy, in part, as a response to Stapledon’s agnostic and amoral philosophy found in this story)
Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Benson), the first four Nancy Drew books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock
Noël Coward, Private Lives
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could (the version illustrated by Lois Lenski)
William H. Elson, Elson Basic Readers (the first appearances of Dick and Jane)
Two rather well-known characters are now on the list:
Rover (later renamed Pluto) from Disney’s The Chain Gang (as an unnamed bloodhound) and The Picnic (as Rover)
Blondie and Dagwood from the Blondie comic strips by Chic Young
Musical compositions include:
Four Songs by Gershwin: “I Got Rhythm,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me,” and “Embraceable You”
“Dream a Little Dream of Me,” lyrics by Gus Kahn, music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt
This means you can write a novel with Nancy Drew and Blondie as the protagonists looking for a murderer at the vicarage while singing “I Got Rhythm,” and use them all without permission.
Please don’t.
