Works From Hemingway, Woolf, Fitzgerald and More Enter the Public Domain

The works include F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and more.

by BWW News Desk Jan. 5, 2021

On January 1, 2021, otherwise known as Public Domain day, copyrights for classic work from literary and musical luminaries from 1925 expired, making the titles free from licensing and available for adaptation by dramatists and creatives.

The works include F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Franz Kafka's The Trial, and Alain Locke's The New Negro, and musical compositions by composers Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller.

Many of the works were originally supposed to enter the public domain twenty years ago. At that time, Congress extended the copyright term for an additional 20 years.

Learn more here.