Public Domain Day 2026

[Alex Cabal]

It's that time of year again - the time when we look ahead to Public
Domain Day 2026, the day in which books published in 1930 enter the US
public domain.

As usual, I'd like to produce some of the headline books ahead of time,
so that we have them ready for release on January 1.

If you'd like to work on a book for January 1, you must:

- Have produced an SE ebook in the past

- Commit to having to ready for review by December 1, and finished by
December 15.

Below is a list of possible books to work on. I'm open to suggestions
for additional books. Your suggestions must be books that are "big-name
headlines" - i.e., name-brand authors, prize winners, high literary
significance, etc.

Remember that in just a few months, you'll be able to work on any 1930
book without restrictions, so if your suggestion isn't a big-name
headline, just wait a few months to work on it then.

Last year I let too many books slip in that were not headlines, and it
clouded the list and became a lot of work to manage. So this year I'm
going to be firmer in rejecting suggestions that can wait a few months.

Finding transcriptions and scans can be difficult. For this project it's
OK to find copies in a local library to proof against, as long as the
copy is PD. We can find online scans later. Transcriptions found
absolutely anywhere are valid, as long as they match the PD text.

I'm claiming The Maltese Falcon for myself. Here's a list of possible
options, in no particular order, for anyone to work on. If you'd like to
claim one, reply to this thread!



Franz Kafka - The Castle (tr. Willa and Edwin Muir)

Agatha Christie - The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple #1)

Agatha Christie - Giant's Bread

John Dos Passos - The 42nd Parallel (USA trilogy #1)

Langston Hughes - Not Without Laughter

Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies

Thornton Wilder - The Woman of Andros (third-best selling novel of 1930)

William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

H. Rider Haggard - Belshazzar (his last novel)

Hermann Sudermann - The Excursion to Tilsit (tr. Lewis Galantière)
(Omnibus required?)

Carolyn Keene - Nancy Drew stories (there were 4 published in 1930, we
require the 1930 editions and not the later rewrites. Are they omnibus
length?)

Margaret Ayer Barnes - Years of Grace (Pulitzer prize)

E. H. Young - Miss Mole (James Tait Black Fiction prize)

Stella Benson - The Far-Away Pride (AKA Tobit Transplanted) (Femina Vie
Heureuse prize)

Geoffrey Dennis - The End of the World (Hawthornden prize)

[Robin Whittleton]

I’ll put my name down for Kafka.

-Robin

> On 1 Oct 2025, at 17:01, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>
> It's that time of year again - the time when we look ahead to Public Domain Day 2026, the day in which books published in 1930 enter the US public domain.

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[Alex Cabal]

OK!

[David]

Vile Bodies - Waugh - I'll grab that, if I can.

Also, I will do Swallows & Amazons (Arthur Ransome) - not on your list, of course!

David / Fife, UK

[Anthony J. Bentley]

Suggestion: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome is PD 2026. It’s a children’s adventure novel that was #57 on BBC’s “The Big Read” survey.

[Weijia Cheng]

I'll claim Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes.

[Hendrik Kaiber]

There are two short fiction collections I think would be interesting: one by Clark Ashton Smith and another by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. A few of Smith's works are already PD, so I'm not sure you would like to count it for PD day, but I thought I would bring it up anyway. Akutagawa had some short stories first published in English in 1930, but only five have a transcription available, so it would be short omnibus. I would like to work on both if you think they are appropriate. I'm compiling spreadsheets for both of them anyway.

I would also like to suggested Scarface, by  Maurice R. Coons (pen name Armitage Trail), although I don't claim this one yet.

If I can't work on any of these or finish them and still have time, I'll pick another one, if that's alright. 

--Hendrik

[Alex Cabal]

The short fiction I think can wait till next year. Let me think about
Scarface... I'm going to say no for now, but if we don't get much
interest in the other options then maybe we could do it.

On 10/1/25 12:01 PM, Hendrik Kaiber wrote:
> There are two short fiction collections I think would be interesting:

> one by Clark Ashton Smith <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Clark_Ashton_Smith> and another by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke <https://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa>. A few of Smith's works

> are already PD, so I'm not sure you would like to count it for PD day,
> but I thought I would bring it up anyway. Akutagawa had some short
> stories first published in English in 1930, but only five have a
> transcription available, so it would be short omnibus. I would like to
> work on both if you think they are appropriate. I'm compiling
> spreadsheets for both of them anyway.
>

> I would also like to suggested /Scarface <https://en.wikisource.org/
> wiki/Scarface>/, by Maurice R. Coons (pen name Armitage Trail), although

> bd1a-3ed1b54c3698%40standardebooks.org <https://
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> >
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[Alex Cabal]

OK!

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[Alex Cabal]

OK!

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[David]

I'm a little hazy on where _Swallows & Amazons_ has ended up - I'd pitched for it earlier in the thread.....

Just want to ensure there's no duplicate efforts! I've got a cover proposal for whoever ends up with it.

D.

On Wednesday, 1 October 2025 at 18:33:00 UTC+1 Alex Cabal wrote:

OK!

On 10/1/25 11:49 AM, 'Anthony J. Bentley' via Standard Ebooks wrote:
> Suggestion: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome is PD 2026. It’s a
> children’s adventure novel that was #57 on BBC’s “The Big Read” survey.
>
>
> On October 1, 2025 9:01:05 AM MDT, Alex Cabal

[Alex Cabal]

Sorry I didn't realize it was pitched by two different people. I think
you got there first so you can work on it.

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[Erin]

It seems no one has claimed Faulkner yet. The Faded Page transcription of As I Lay Dying is of the first British edition, published in 1935. The verso page of the Penguin Vintage edition that I would be able to get from the library says copyright 1930, first published in Great Britain in 1935. Does that indicate that we could use the FP transcription?

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[Sergio Tellez]

Hello.

I humbly ask permission to work on "The End of the World" by Geoffrey Dennis after completing my current ebook project. I'm not familiar with the process of Public Domain Day ebooks, but I would be using a transcription of a 1931 reprint hosted on Faded Page and digital book scans taken from a 1930 edition available at the Internet Archive. The copyright line on the scans read: "MCMXXX Eyre and Spottiswoode Publishers—London."

Would these resources be okay to use in the proposed project? Thank you in advance!

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, that's sufficient. I'll set up the project!

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[Alex Cabal]

OK, sure. I've set up the project. That transcription and scans are
fine. I think this is your first PD day project? The way this works is
that you DO NOT set up a Github repo. Instead, work on a repo that is
local to your computer only. Once your ebook is ready for review, zip
the repo up and email it to me PRIVATELY, NOT on the SE mailing list.
We'll do the review privately.

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[Alex Cabal]

OK, we've got a good start so far. We have the following books
remaining. Anybody interested in picking a few up?

Agatha Christie is always very popular, and it's Miss Marple...

Agatha Christie - The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple #1)

Agatha Christie - Giant's Bread

John Dos Passos - The 42nd Parallel (USA trilogy #1)

Thornton Wilder - The Woman of Andros (third-best selling novel of 1930)

H. Rider Haggard - Belshazzar (his last novel)

Hermann Sudermann - The Excursion to Tilsit (tr. Lewis Galantière)
(Omnibus required?)

Carolyn Keene - Nancy Drew stories (there were 4 published in 1930, we
require the 1930 editions and not the later rewrites. Are they omnibus
length?)

Margaret Ayer Barnes - Years of Grace (Pulitzer prize)

E. H. Young - Miss Mole (James Tait Black Fiction prize)

Stella Benson - The Far-Away Pride (AKA Tobit Transplanted) (Femina Vie
Heureuse prize)

[Hendrik Kaiber]

I think I'll pick Miss Mole, if that's available. Faded Page has the transcription of a 1931 reprint, can I use it?

--Hendrik

[David Reimer]

I *was* interested in The Murder at the Vicarage (Marple #1), but
after scouring the internet for copies of it on its own (i.e., not
part of some kind of omnibus or collection) and drawing a blank, set
it aside. I don't know whether others are similarly affected?

IF it was acceptable to use "borrowable" scans like
https://archive.org/details/missmarpleomnibu0003chri/page/n5/mode/2up
then that would change things....

D.

[Alex Cabal]

It's always been an option to use borrawable scans. Go for it!

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, you can use that. I'll create a project.

On 10/3/25 9:21 AM, Hendrik Kaiber wrote:
> I think I'll pick /Miss Mole/, if that's available. Faded Page has the

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[Alexander Keane]

I'd be interested in tackling the Nancy Drew books. I don't have an exact length figure for each but the estimates Im getting looking them up appear to be centering on 40k words (35k-45k) which is about the same length as the Hardy Boys titles which are maintained as individual titles.

(Also worth noting that the estimates I can find involve the 1950s rewrites which appear to have cut the page count from the 1930 originals)

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[Alex Cabal]

OK, sure. These will be tricky because you MUST find scans of the 1930
originals and not the later rewrites. Then you must confirm the
transcriptions you found match the scans. With Hardy Boys I remember it
was hard finding the scans ahead of time, but hopefully they're out
there somewhere.

Once you find the transcriptions, do a word count and let us know so we
can decide how to proceed.

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[Alex Cabal]

There are still lots of options to pick from if anyone is interested.
I'll add one more to the list, the best selling novel of 1930:

Edna Ferber - Cimarron

[Elizabeth Miller-Boldt]

I was considering taking Nancy Drew, but I'm still proofreading my other book :| 

But I did look up and find a transcription and scans, so if you have a hard time finding them, let me know and I can dig them up. May have to be private email since it's not PD yet, but I it looks like they do exist. 

[Robin Whittleton]

Seeing as Kafka is progressing at pace I’ll pick up the Stella Benson as well.

-Robin

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[Alex Cabal]

OK!

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[Alex Cabal]

Alexander Keane will be working on them and I'm sure he'd appreciate
links to scans and transcriptions!

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