Some 1925 Publications that are Public Domain in 2021 in the USA

Suggest and discuss books to read (all languages welcome!)
ColleenMc
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Post by ColleenMc »

This is not an exhaustive list, but rather the titles and authors that I recognized when I was looking at a list of 1925 publications. I had been putting off doing this because I was going to wait until there were good links for the texts, but I can add those as I find them, and this gives everyone an idea of what is out there.

The BIG ONES - these are the big time classics that become public domain this year, that are the most obvious candidates for recording!

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald Completed!

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf Completed!
https://librivox.org/mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/

Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos
Text: https://archive.org/details/manhattantransfe00dosprich/page/n7/mode/2up

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser Vol 1 completed! viewtopic.php?f=12&t=86567
Vol 2 completed! https://librivox.org/an-american-tragedy-vol2-by-theodore-dreiser/

Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis Completed! https://librivox.org/arrowsmith-by-sinclair-lewis/

In Our Time (short stories collection) - Ernest Hemingway
Text: https://books.google.com/books?id=HgctAAAAIAAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&dq=in+our+time+hemingway&hl=en
(Note: this was recorded as a collection last year, I guess from the 1924 small press French edition. But that’s not to say another can’t be done, and of course the individual stories are available for short stories collections...)


Lesser Known Authors or Lesser Known Works by Well Known Authors

Barren Ground - Ellen Glasgow
Text: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Barren_Ground/HadaAAAAMAAJ

No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (2nd part of his Parade's End Tetralogy) Completed!
Text: https://archive.org/details/nomoreparadesnov0000ford/page/n9/mode/2up

Dark Laughter - Sherwood Anderson
Text: https://archive.org/details/darklaughter0000ande_n3y3/page/n5/mode/2up

The Professor's House - Willa Cather Completed!
Text: https://archive.org/details/professorshouse0000cath_e2e8/page/n7/mode/2up

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Anita Loos Completed!
Text: https://archive.org/details/gentlemenpreferb0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up

The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham Completed!
Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64682

The Making of Americans - Gertrude Stein

Christina Alberta's Father - H.G. Wells
Text: https://archive.org/details/christinaalberta0000well

A Mother's Recompense - Edith Wharton Completed! https://librivox.org/the-mothers-recompense-by-edith-wharton/

In the American Grain - William Carlos Williams
Text: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000328870

The Everlasting Man - G.K. Chesterton (nonfiction, Christian apologetics) Completed! https://librivox.org/the-everlasting-man-by-g-k-chesterton/

Those Barren Leaves - Aldous Huxley
Text: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000480613?type%5B%5D=all&lookfor%5B%5D=those%20barren%20leaves&ft=
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Those_Barren_Leaves/OyUiAAAAMAAJ

Porgy - Dubose Heyward Completed!
Text: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Porgy/gd5aAAAAMAAJ

Popular Authors

The Miser of Maida Vale - Baroness Orczy

A Question of Temptation - Baroness Orczy

The Blue Hand - Edgar Wallace

The Fellowship of the Frog - Edgar Wallace

The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder - Edgar Wallace

The Strange Countess - Edgar Wallace

The Three Just Men - Edgar Wallace

Carry On Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse Completed!

Colin II - E.F. Benson

Rex - E.F. Benson

Mother - E.F. Benson

The Eternal Lover - Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Wind - Dorothy Scarborough Complete https://librivox.org/the-wind-by-dorothy-scarborough/

The Venetian Glass Nephew - Elinor Wylie

The Mystery Lady - Robert W. Chambers

John MacNab - John Buchan

The Red Lamp - Mary Roberts Rinehart Completed! https://librivox.org/the-red-lamp-by-mary-roberts-rinehart/

The Black Cabinet - Patricia Wentworth

The Dower House Mystery - Patricia Wentworth
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001775940?type%5B%5D=all&lookfor%5B%5D=the%20dower%20house%20mystery&ft=ft

The Viaduct Murder - Ronald Knox
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Viaduct_Murder/j3EGAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Simon the Coldheart - Georgette Heyer Text Link: https://archive.org/details/simoncoldheart00heye_0/mode/2up

The Puzzle Lock - R. Austin Freeman

The Shadow of the Wolf - R. Austin Freeman

The Layton Court Mystery - Anthony Berkeley


Children's Books

Doctor Dolittle's Zoo - Hugh Lofting In Progress April 2022 by phil chenevert

Lost King of Oz - Ruth Plumly Thompson

Emily Climbs - L.M. Montgomery - Completed!-https://librivox.org/emily-climbs-by-lucy-maud-montgomery/

The School at the Chalet - Elinor Brent-Dyer (1st in a series of over 50 school novels set at the Chalet school)

Shen of the Sea: Chinese Stories for Children - Arthur Bowie Chrisman (won 1926 Newberry) Completed!
Text: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/65206

Poetry

Poems 1909-1925 (includes "The Hollow Men") - T.S. Eliot

Babbling April - Graham Greene

Troy Park - Edith Sitwell

The Espalier - Sylvia Townsend Warner

You Who Have Dreams - Maxwell Anderson

Tiger Joy - Stephen Vincent Benet

Color - Countee Cullen In progress: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=85632

& - e.e. cummings

XLI Poems - e.e. cummings - COMPLETE https://librivox.org/xli-poems-by-e-e-cummings/

Collected Poems of H.D. - Hilda Doolittle

Roan Stallion - Robinson Jeffers

The Pot of Earth - Archibald Macleish

Dionysius in Doubt - Edward Arlington Robinson

A Vision - W.B. Yeats


Important Anthology

The New Negro - Alain Locke


Translations into English

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms - (Chinese) - Trans. Charles Henry Brewitt Taylor
Text: https://www.google.com/books/edition/San_Kuo/0gsSAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (volume 1)

Plays

Hay Fever - Noel Coward Completed! https://librivox.org/hay-fever-by-noel-coward/

Fallen Angels - Noel Coward

The Butter and Egg Man - George S. Kaufman

The Jazz Singer - Samson Rafaelson

Outside Looking In - Maxwell Anderson

Craig's Wife - George Kelly (winner of 1926 Pulitzer)



Colleen
Last edited by ColleenMc on February 12th, 2021, 8:13 am, edited 4 times in total.
Colleen McMahon

No matter where you go, there you are. -- Buckaroo Banzai
mightyfelix
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Post by mightyfelix »

Colleen, I hate to tell you, but the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight you have there is not actually an English translation by Tolkien. It is a Middle English publication that was edited by Tolkien and a colleague. He does have a translation, but it was not published until two years after his death (that is, 1975), according to my copy. If there are any Middle English scholars here, they might love to have a go at this 1925 publication. I was able to find it. But... Well, take a look:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035315160&view=1up&seq=41
ColleenMc
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Post by ColleenMc »

Okay, thanks! I guess Wikipedia got confused between the original version from 1925 and later translation?

Colleen
Colleen McMahon

No matter where you go, there you are. -- Buckaroo Banzai
mightyfelix
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Post by mightyfelix »

Yes, I suppose so. I was surprised and delighted to see it on your list, because I didn't expect it would be PD for a long long time. I hate being right sometimes. :lol:
zachh
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Post by zachh »

Thanks for putting this together. I see you have The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Rinehart on your list. I'm planning to start a solo reading in a week or two. I am waiting for a 1925 copy that I ordered to arrive in the mail and it is taking a while with the overload the post office is under nowadays.
gweeks
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Post by gweeks »

My library has Lost King of OZ, but it's a in-library use only book, so it will have to wait for the end of COVID restrictions.

Greg
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Post by ChuckW »

I've read through The Jazz Singer and might do it eventually... but honestly, I'm not sure if I'm ready to juggle too many LV projects at the moment. If anyone wants to take this one on, however, let me know and I'll send the character breakdowns for each Act (which, yes, I made earlier this month when I was thinking about launching this myself).
PROJECTS
Current Solo:Septimius Felton (Hawthorne's final novel)
Help Needed: Strange Interlude (O'Neill's Freudian melodrama - roles available!)
knotyouraveragejo
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Post by knotyouraveragejo »

Jo
zachh
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Post by zachh »

Knotyouraveragejo, thank you for the link. I had looked at it a few weeks ago but I thought I would rather use a book than try to read from the scan since my laptop screen is pretty small. Reading from Gutenberg on my first solo was very easy since it was text in a format that covered the whole width of the browser window, but they don't have that book yet. Since I could get a 1925 copy for under $10 I decided to do that, but now it seems to have gotten delayed along with all of the other mail that our poor overworked mail persons are trying to catch up with.
Bill
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Post by Bill »

Hello, ColleenMc;

Please forgive the uninformed question: How does one go about speaking for one of these titles?
ColleenMc
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Post by ColleenMc »

Bill wrote: February 10th, 2021, 1:10 pm Hello, ColleenMc;

Please forgive the uninformed question: How does one go about speaking for one of these titles?
Hi Bill and welcome!

I don't run anything here, anyone is welcome to start a project with any of these books, either as a group or solo recording. Or any other public domain work available through a reputable site (which people can point you toward) for that matter.

However, if you are interested in starting to record here, it's a good idea to start smaller than a whole book or trying to run a project. Take a look at the wiki and make sure you have the gear you need to do recording, then do the 1-minute test to make sure your technical settings are all correct. Then it's best to try a few small things like a chapter of a group project, a poem, or a short works contribution, to get used to the recording and editing process and see how you enjoy it. Then you can try jumping into bigger projects.

Good luck!

Colleen
Colleen McMahon

No matter where you go, there you are. -- Buckaroo Banzai
Bill
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Post by Bill »

Hello, Colleen,

Thank you so much for your sweet, considerate reply! I shall do just that. If, by some chance, you hear anything I do, please weigh in with candid input and criticism!

All the best,

Bill
Hanglerfish
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Post by Hanglerfish »

I'd love to do The Painted Veil, but when I started setting up a page for it on Launchpad, I got a warning saying that the copyright law in my country is that an author must be dead for 70 years before a work falls out of copyright (Maugham died in 1965).

If I'm recording from Britain, am I not eligible for this one?
annise
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Post by annise »

You would certainly be breaking the copyright laws in Britain if you downloaded the text there as the law there is based on the death date of the author, not the publication date.
All mention of PD status here is based on USA law because that is where all our files are stored.

Anne
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Post by Hanglerfish »

annise wrote: February 14th, 2021, 4:11 am You would certainly be breaking the copyright laws in Britain if you downloaded the text there as the law there is based on the death date of the author, not the publication date.
All mention of PD status here is based on USA law because that is where all our files are stored.

Anne
Thanks for clarifying.

So is it illegal to download the book here, but not to record it? Or are both illegal? The text I was going to use was from a public domain archive in Canada, where it's all PD, so no download is required.
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