Celebrate the New Year with a happy Public Domain Day!

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Bryan Alexander

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome aboard, 2025!

And what better way to celebrate the new year then to recognize a whole slew of cultural objects just entered the public domain? Yes, books, movies, and more from 1929 (and audio recordings from 1924) just left copyright as of this very day, according to United States law. Other titles enter public domain from different years, depending on national laws (see below). So today is officially Public Domain Day.

Here are some examples of what’s now in the PD, assembled by, described by, and quoted from Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Books:

• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
• Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
• Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
• John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (Steinbeck’s first novel)
• Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
• Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story
• Patrick Hamilton, Rope
• Arthur Wesley Wheen, the…