Gatsby lover in Michigan received a scanned version of the manuscript.
Props to Gates. But should such generosity be so random in regard to books when libraries face new budget challenges, especially in paying for ebooks and audiobooks, whose use has skyrocketed during the virus crisis? U.S. public libraries can spend only about $1.7 billion a year on content of all kinds, digital and nondigital.
two national digital library systems and something else in the interest of a more literate America: shortened copyright terms.
Gatsby, published in 1925, was illegal to reproduce without authorization in the United States until yesterday, January 1, 2021, when the copyright
The Great Gatsby at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair in London in 2013. Image credit: Oli Scarff
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What a year it was for Anglo-American literature and the arts!
1925 was the year of heralded novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, seminal works by Sinclair Lewis, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley … and a banner year for musicians, too. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, among hundreds of others, made important recordings. And 1925 marked the release of canonical movies from silent film comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
The Great Gatsby at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair in London in 2013. Oli Scarff / Getty Images
What a year it was for Anglo-American literature and the arts!
1925 was the year of heralded novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, seminal works by Sinclair Lewis, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley . and a banner year for musicians, too. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, among hundreds of others, made important recordings. And 1925 marked the release of canonical movies from silent film comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
As of today, every single one of those works has entered the public domain. That means that copyright has expired, explains Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor at Duke University who directs its Center for the Study of the Public Domain. And all of the works are free for anyone to use, reuse, build upon for anyone without paying a
January 1, 2021 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1925 are open to all!
On January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 will enter the US public domain,1 where they will be free for all to use and build upon. These works include books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s
In Our Time, and Franz Kafka’s
The Trial (in the original German), silent films featuring Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, and music ranging from the jazz standard
Sweet Georgia Brown to songs by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, W.C. Handy, and Fats Waller.
This is not just the famous last line from