What Lit Works Have Entered The Public Domain?

Lit Hub has the list that awful script writers will now butcher for the edification of morons…Although let’s be honest they are going to struggle with Lady Chatterly’s Lover to make that mildly interesting for anyone to read/ watch.. God that book is dull.

 

So what’s on the table this year? Though copyright laws differ from country to country, on January 1st, 2024, books that were published in 1928 will enter the public domain in the United States. Here’s a selection of the most interesting:

 

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (the original play)

Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle

Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook

Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (the oldest American picture book still in print!)

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

Nella Larsen, Quicksand

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (the original, unexpurgated version)

A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (meaning we’re soon to get a Tigger-themed sequel to the aforementioned horror flick)

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (but only in the original German)

Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

W.B. Yeats, The Tower

Also of note? The earliest version of Mickey Mouse, as he first appeared in Steamboat Willie, will enter the public domain in 2024. Gird yourselves.