Firstly, happy new year to you all. I hope 2023 is even more prosperous than 2022. If you’re a creative or a lover of the arts, today’s events might help with that.
1st January is Public Domain Day as I’ve documented in 2019, 2021, and 2022. This year, that means that certain works of art from 1927 become free of copyright in the US and available to the public to do what they want with it and without permission.
Below you will find a list of works from 1927 you might find interesting. As always, check works from any years prior to 1927 to make absolutely sure you follow any licence requirements (if there are any), particularly in other countries or regions (e.g. the EU) where copyrights may have been extended. And happy hunting!
Lists of public domain works from 1927 and more
- January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all!
- Sherlock Holmes, Metropolis, and More Enter Public Domain Today
- Metropolis, Sherlock Holmes, and more enter public domain in 2023
- Books Hitting the Public Domain in 2023
- 2023 in public domain
Notable books
- Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse
- Arthur Conan Doyle – The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
- A. A. Milne – Now We Are Six
- Ernest Hemingway – Men Without Women
- William Faulkner – Mosquitoes
- Agatha Christie – The Big Four
- Franz Kafka – Amerika (German original only)
- Marcel Proust – Le Temps retrouvé (French original only)
- Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern – Show Boat
Notable films
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
- Metropolis
- The Jazz Singer
- The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
- The Battle of the Century
- Napoléon
- ‘It’
- Wings
- October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
- The Unknown
- The Kid Brother
- 7th Heaven
- Underworld
- The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
- My Best Girl
Notable musical compositions
- The Best Things in Life Are Free
- (I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream
- Puttin’ on the Ritz
- Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man and Ol’ Man River
- Back Water Blues, Preaching the Blues, Foolish Man Blues
- Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues
- Black and Tan Fantasy and East St. Louis Toodle-O