In an article about this year's Public Domain Day, Jenkins discusses everything from the changes in length of copyright to a fascinating story about the copyright of Hitler's Mein Kampf, which also enters the public domain this year. (A dizzyingly exhaustive list of works from 1925 now in the public domain can be found here.)
"What a bumper crop!" Jenkins exults. Besides the marquee names traditionally lionized by the literary estalishment, she is quick to point out, there's rich, unplumbed material especially useful to scholars of marginalized communities. And to be able to use and interpret these works — to put them in dialogue with contemporary thoughts and ideas — what a legacy of artistry and inspiration, says Jenkins, with which to begin 2021.
Below, you can peruse a selection of works entering the public domain today, hand-picked by Jenkins:
Books
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Trial (in German) by Franz Kafka
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
The New Negro edited by Alain Locke (collecting works from writers including W.E.B. du Bois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and Eric Walrond)
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs by Dorothy Scarborough
The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton
A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
Films
Harold Lloyd's The Freshman
The Merry Widow
Stella Dallas
Buster Keaton's Go West
His People
Lovers in Quarantine
Pretty Ladies
The Unholy Three
Music
"Always," by Irving Berlin
"Sweet Georgia Brown," by Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard and Kenneth Casey
Works by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, the "Mother of the Blues," including "Army Camp Harmony Blues" (with Hooks Tilford) and "Shave 'Em Dry" (with William Jackson)
"Looking for a Boy," by George and Ira Gershwin (from the musical Tip-Toes)
"Manhattan," by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers
"Ukulele Lady," by Gus Kahn and Richard Whiting
"Yes Sir, That's My Baby," by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson
Works by "Jelly Roll" Morton, including "Shreveport Stomp" and "Milenberg Joys" (with Paul Mares, Walter Melrose and Leon Roppolo)
Works by W.C. Handy, including "Friendless Blues" (with Mercedes Gilbert), "Bright Star of Hope" (with Lillian A. Thorsten) and "When the Black Man Has a Nation of His Own" (with J.M. Miller)
Works by Duke Ellington, including "Jig Walk" and "With You" (both with Joseph "Jo" Trent)
Works by "Fats" Waller, including "Anybody Here Want To Try My Cabbage" (with Andy Razaf), "Ball and Chain Blues" (with Andy Razaf), and "Campmeetin' Stomp"
... plus many, many more. You can find Jenkins' full list here, and the exhaustive list of works here.)
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