Public Domain Review has a festive nativity featuring works that will enter the public domain on January 1, 2025.
In our advent-style calendar below, find our top pick of what lies in store for 2025. Each day, as we move through December, we'll open a new window to reveal our highlights! By public domain day on January 1st they will all be unveiled — look out for a special blogpost from us on that day. (And, of course, if you want to dive straight in and explore the vast swathe of new entrants for yourself, just visit the links above).
You get one click a day! I used mine on Graham Greene's The Man Within.
The Man Within (1929) is the first novel by author Graham Greene, an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the twentieth century. It tells the story of Francis Andrews, a reluctant smuggler who betrays his colleagues, and the aftermath of his betrayal. It is Greene's first published novel. (Two earlier attempts at writing novels were never published, but a book of poetry, Babbling April, was published in 1925, while Greene was a student at Balliol College, Oxford). The title is taken from a sentence in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici: "There's another man within me that's angry with me." Greene, in his preface to the Penguin paperback edition of the book, derides the book as hopelessly romantic. But the favourable reception of his debut novel did enable him to work full-time as a novelist. (Wikipedia)
If you don't want to play no games, Wikipedia has the full list. Films include a number that marked the first of their kind with sound, such as The Taming of the Shrew, The Return of Sherlock Holmes and The Three Masks.
Examples of important literary works entering the public domain include Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, William Seabrook's novel The Magic Island (the first book to introduce the concept of a zombie). Ellery Queen's detective novel The Roman Hat Mystery, Margery Allingham detective novel The Crime at Black Dudley, the first English translation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz in its original German, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali in its original Bengali, Lynd Ward's wordless novel Gods' Man, William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Ruth Plumly Thompson's novel Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, Bertrand Russell's book Marriage and Morals, Patrick Hamilton's play Rope, A. A. Milne's play Toad of Toad Hall, Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own, Ludwig Wittgenstein's essay Some Remarks on Logical Form and the first part of the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (full in public domain by 2029).
Important artworks entering the public domain include René Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images, Salvador Dali's paintings The Great Masturbator and The Accommodations of Desire, Wassily Kandinsky's painting Upward, Edward Hopper's painting Chop Suey, Kawamura Kiyoo's painting Founding of the Nation, Julio Romero de Torres' painting La Fuensanta, M. C. Escher's print Strada di Scanno, the first design of the Barcelona chair and August Sander's photograph Berlin Coal Carrier and other photographs from his 1929 photobook Face of our Time.
