L2L Lit in PD 2022

Lit in PD 2022

Off copyright, old firsts are new again ...

The New Year offers fresh hope, new (or sometimes renewed) resolutions, and a bounty of old works: On January 1, copyrighted texts from 1926 (as well as several hundred thousand sound recordings from before 1923) entered the public domain. This means they are free to read and reimagine. Per Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, 2022 welcomes “a lot of ‘firsts’: the first Winnie-the-Pooh book from A. A. Milne, the first published novels from Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, the first books of poems from Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker.” There are also works from Agatha Christie, Edna Ferber, Willa Cather, T. E. Lawrence, and D. H. Lawrence, among others. In an annual “unveiling,” this week Leigh, P. T., and Dr. C survey some.