Happy New Year everyone. Or perhaps I should say, happy Public Domain Day!
Something I like to do at this time each year is to review the works entering the Public Domain due to Copyright expiration. It's a complicated issue as copyright laws differ between jurisdictions, but in much of the world Copyright expires 70 years after the death of the Author(s). This means that the works by authors who died in 1940 will enter into the Public Domain today.
This year that list includes: Mikhail Bulgakov (author of one of my favourite books), John Buchan, Selma Lagerlöf (the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature), Leon Trotsky and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
However, many of these authors didn't write in English. The copyright on the English language translations of their works will not usually expire until 70 years after the death of the translator.
Anyway, if you'd like to learn more the following links may be of interest:
http://www.publicdomainworks.net/stats/year/2011
http://www.publicdomainday.org/node/5
