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THIS WEEK IN
DECEMBER 26 — JANUARY 1
These books are entering the public domain in 2022. In 2019, for the first time in over two decades, a new crop of literary work entered the public domain: everything first published in the United States in 1923. (Don’t forget the secret public domain books, either.) In 2020, books by E.M. Forster, Edna Ferber, and Edith Wharton became available for remixing. And last year brought us everything published in 1925, “the greatest year for books,” including, of course, The Great Gatsby (yes, a sequel was published immediately, with plenty more in the works).
So what’s on the table this year? Though copyright laws differ from country to country, on January 1, 2022, books that were published in 1926 will enter the public domain in the United States. Here’s a selection of the most interesting:
Willa Cather, My Mortal Enemy Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd William Faulkner, Soldiers’ Pay Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway, The Torrents of Spring Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades Zora Neale Hurston, Color Struck D.H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent D.H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Vladimir Nabokov, Mary Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope Franz Kafka, Das Schloss (The Castle) Yasunari Kawabata, “The Dancing Girl of Izu”
Might as well start thinking about your remixes and sequel concepts now. 
Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan’s landmark new novel, a tale of one man’s courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family.
“A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time.”—Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers
BALL DROP “And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” —RAINER MARIA RILKE
In other (old) news this week The Irish National Theatre Society opens to the public in Dublin for the first time (December 27, 1904) • Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago, an exposé of the Soviet prison system (December 28, 1973) • Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull opens at the Moscow Art Theatre (December 29, 1898) • Genius jerk James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published for the first time as a single volume (December 29, 1916) • Playwright Václav Havel becomes the President of Czechoslovakia (December 29, 1989) • Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet is performed for the first time at the castle of Kronborg in Helsingør, (aka Elsinore, Denmark) where it is set. It did not star any of our favorite Hamlets (December 30, 1816) 
“A person doesn’t consciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them.” 
–DAVID SEDARIS Born this week in 1956 “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable.” 
–SUSAN SONTAG Died this week in 2004
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