One of my favorite things about the new year is Public Domain Day, when works come out of copyright and into the public domain. This year, in the United States, works from 1929 join the public doman, as do sound recordings from 1924. Duke University School of Law has a web page celebrating Public Domain Day each year that lists some of the works that will be free of copyright in the US. This year, the list includes The Skeleton Dance (the first Silly Symphony Cartoon), The Cup (John Steinbeck’s first novel), Pandora’s Box (a silent film starring Louise Brooks), The Cocoanuts (the first Marx Brothers feature film), Singing in the Rain (the song), An American in Paris (the song), Ravel’s Bolero, and George Gershwin’s recording of Rhapsody in Blue.
The Standard eBooks project has already put out twenty free ebooks from 1925’s new public domain works, including books you read in high school like Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Not on their list, but on mine to read, is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which also is now in the public domain in the US.