Public Domain Authors and Artists

The High Priestess
Original Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot

The huge volume of work by L. M. Montgomery who wrote the Anne of Green Gables series, and books by prolific American author A. E. Waite, are the most well-known of the publications, paintings and music that entered the public domain in 2013.

Copyright is expiring on the artwork of Grant Wood who painted the famous American Gothic, and the work of Walter Sickert, an important painter from the British avant-garde that some believe was the infamous Jack the Ripper! The oeuvre of modernist artist Ramon Casas from Spain is also part of the public domain. Paintings of another modernist have been freely available since 2011 - Paul Klee, one of the founders of the Bauhaus school.

Learn about native American languages and culture from the "Father of American Anthropology", Franz Boas. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski studied native cultures in the South Pacific Islands and Australia. Popular authors from Germany, the UK and the United States are also represented.

Music from Scandinavian composers is on the list, and this year a specially prepared selection of surprisingly futuristic music written 100 years ago by Luigi Russolo that was released to coincide with Public Domain Day, celebrated internationally every year on January 1st.

• Native American languages - Franz Boas
• Catalonian painter Ramon Casas
• Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
• Pacific island cultures - Bronislaw Malinowski
• The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
• Painter Walter Sickert and "The Ripper"
• Tarot cards and books of A. E. Waite

American Gothic by painter Grant Wood

The definition of Public Domain is a moving target for many reasons, and the standards used to decide if a book is in the public domain are difficult if not impossible to obey. Always determine the status of copyrights before using text or images from any source.

The general rule of thumb is "life plus 70 years" - the copyright lasts 70 years after the life of the artist, in many countries (except the U.S.) While the copyright is active, only the publisher, the artist and their heirs can collect royalties or income from the sale of the intellectual property.

The artist also controls any "derivative works" that can be licensed to others while the copyright is active. This is the arrangement that an author can have when a large entertainment company buys the "option" to turn their book into a motion picture produced by a major film studio, and the "branded" merchandise created by toy makers, for example. Read more about copyright regulations and celebrate Public Domain Day.

The rule of thumb is inappropriate when the artist was born in another country – with longer expiration dates for copyrights, to as much as 120 years after the life of the artist. Strong commercial forces have extended the copyright to 95 years in the United States. For this reason, there will be few artists from the U.S. that will enter the public domain until the year 2019.

Anne of Green Gables was the first book by the author, published in 1908, and the complete series was completed years later with a total of eight books. The setting of the series is the now famous Price Edwards Island where the author was born. Montgomery completed over 500 other publications of short stories and poetry in her long career.

1. Anne of Green Gables

   Find a total of 37 public domain titles from the Internet Archive in digital format to read on ipad, mp3 players, PDAs, mobile phones or desktop computer, including audio books of collected short stores.

2. Books: L. M. Montgomery

   25 digital collections of books, poetry and short stories at Project Gutenberg in standard formats including Plucker and QiOO Mobile.

Arthur Edward Waite was an American author who brought clarity and modern thinking to the interpretation of ancient manuscripts from early scientists, scholars, saints and sorcerers of the middle ages in Europe.

He joined the secret societies fashionable in the early nineteenth century to get a better understanding of esoteric traditions. More that anything, Waite is known for co-creating the most popular tarot deck in english-speaking countries for understanding the symbols of the major and minor arcana.

After years of research, Waite created this tarot deck with the artist Pamela Colman-Smith to accurately represent the symbols and the universal truths that are the very essence of the tarot.

William Rider And Son of London published the first edition in 1909. The author passed away in 1942, but the artist Colman-Smith, died in 1951. US Games obtained the rights to the property and they have successfully defended their copyright in court until 2021 - based on the life of the illustrator, not the author.

Tarot is much more than a tool of fortune telling and divination. Waite makes an in-depth study of the symbolism and numerology of the 22 cards in the major arcana, and the other 56 cards, which can be understood as a textbook of ancient knowledge. The cards may even have origins in the game of chess, itself an ancient game.

Waite was also interested in ceremonies and magic from pagan cultures and religious rituals which can be used for both positive and nefarious purposes.

1. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot

   Six public domain books to read online about the tarot by A. E. Waite and five other authors. Scroll down the page to get a reading from the Rider Waite deck.

2. A. E. Waite from the Internet Archive

   Six lesser-known books from the author in six digital formats for Kindle, ePub and PDF readers.

3. Free Ebooks by Arthur Edward Waite

   10 books about tarot, Rosecrucians, alchemy and magic in PDF format (download small .zip files)

Symbols of Alchemy and Hermetics

Ancient manuscripts and paintings with symbolic drawings and diagrams are filled with mystery and intrigue. These topics captured the interest of the public recently with bestselling books and popular movies about esoteric science, code breaking and symbols.

Portrait of artist Walter Sickert

Walter Sickert was born in Germany and moved to London with his parents in 1868. The landscapes in his paintings are not the bucolic outdoors that were fashionable at the time with impressionist painters. Sickert painted scenes from the streets of London and the seedy dance halls of the city. His artwork shocked critics and the general public at the time, as much for the subject matter as his style of painting at the transition of impressionism to "modern" art forms in the early 20th century.

Sickert was a founding member of the Camden Town Group artists that formed in that neighborhood of London during the early part of the 20th century.

1. The Art Institute of Chicago has about 15 of his drawings and paintings
2. Sickert at Wikimedia Commons - 2 works and photo portraits
3. Sickert online catalog from libraries and museums collections

Casas started as a portrait artist traveling between Paris and his native Barcelona, and even showing his paintings at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

This was the time when Art Nouveau was gaining popularity in France and around the world. Casas is identified with the Modernisme movement in Barcelona which echoed this new style of art from Paris, and the cultural revolution that was happening in Catalonia.

Wikimedia commons has a selection of 55 paintings by Ramon Casas, and see paintings by Casas on Google Art Project.

Franz Boas started his career struggling with the after-effects of the sensational theories of Charles Darwin which swept through the scientific community after On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. Boaz broke from his colleagues at the Smithsonian Institute, to study the native American languages and culture of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. Later, he founded the first Ph.D. anthropology program in America at Columbia University.

Polish ethnologist / anthropologist who emigrated to the United Staes during the Second World War and settled into a teaching job at Yale. Argonauts of the Western Pacific is considered his most important contribution to science, with particular emphasis in "participatory observation" where scientists live in close contact with native subjects, working with local "informants" from the group to learn more details about daily activities and rituals.

1. Books about Native American Languages by Franz Boas with 22 works about the Chinook language and the landmark Handbook of American Indian Languages
2. Bronislaw Malinowski wrote about Fiji, Pacific Rim and Australian aboriginals.

Luigi Russolo, an Italian futurist painter and composer cataloged the sounds of the early industrial revolution to create musical scores that predated "industrial noise" music by almost 100 years. Russolo's music would not be out of place in a rock concert in during the 1990s -- in a double billing with bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division and Kraftwerk, or composers like John Cage. Your patience will be rewarded if you can sit through some of the lovely grating sounds compiled for the 100th anniversary of noise music.

• 100th anniversary of 'La´Arte dei Rumori', the first artistic manifesto concerning noise music.
• Various Artists - 100 Years of Noise - Listen online and download MP3 and OGG files.

Schulz is best known in Poland and the Ukraine for his epic book The Street of Crocodiles, originally titled The Cinnamon Shops ("Sklepy Cynamonowe"), published in 1934 and later adapted for motion pictures and theater.

• William Pierpont Black - woodcarver (Romania)
• Franz Boas - anthropologist (Germany)
• Ernest Bramah - author (United Kingdom)
• Ramon Casas - painter (Spain)
• Neel Doff - playwright (Belgium)
• Leon Daudet - author (France)
• Violet Hunt - author (United Kingdom)
• Artturi Jarviluoma - author (Finland)
• Janusz Korczak - author (Poland)
• Peadar Toner Mac Fhionnlaoich - author (Ireland)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery - author (United States)
• Bronislaw Malinowski - anthropologist (Poland)
• Robert Musil - author (Austria)
• Wilhelm Peterson-Berger - composer (Sweden)
• Eric Ravilious - painter (United Kingdom)
• Bruno Schulz - author (Poland)
• Walter Sickert - painter (Germany)
• Edith Stein - Saint (Germany)
• Tatu Vaaskivi - author (Finland)
• Terezia Vansova - author (Slovakia)
• Grant Wood - painter (United States)
• Arthur Edward Waite - author (United States)
• Francis Younghusband - author (United Kingdom)
• Stefan Zweig - author (Austria)