[Orusaka]

Hi, guys. I'm new here. I've been lurking for a while, but I figured I'd join today to tell of my journey trying to ascertain whether an ebook I'm putting together is in the public domain worldwide, or not.

Over the past few weeks I've spent a few dozen hours scanning, ocr-ing and manually checking every line by hand of Francis David Byrne's translation of "The Golden Ass", simply because it is, in my opinion, the best of the potential PD translations of it, and that more modern translations bring little to the table, and what could be considered the best translation could be had for free by all.

Now, in this process, I've also spent some 20 odd hours trying to find a date of death to establish public domain outside of the US. (where it's publication in 1905 automatically grants is PD status.) I have as of yet been unsuccessful in producing date of birth nor date of death, but I have produced many fascinating tidbits of information that paint a picture of the life of a man, that I figured I'd share.

Francis David Byrne (aka. Francis D. Byrne, F. D. Byrne):
1878: Matriculated in Ushaw college in June.
1880: Intermediate Arts at Ushaw.
1896: Publishes "Prayers for the People" with Burns & Oats as Revered Francis David Byrne.
1896: According to "The Veneration of Saint Agnes, V.M., "Mary's waiting maid"" Rev. F. D. Byrne renames "the church at West Hampstead, North-west
London" St. Agnes.
1889: F. D. Byrne places an advertisement with "The Spectator" in November, seeking work as a private secretary or agent, citing knowledge of European languages and "considerable European experience". He gives his age as "about 35". Presumably this add means he is no longer with the church, and no further works of his will be published with the title Rev.
1900: Credited alongside Lionel Strachey for the translation of Volume 23 of "Honoré De Balzac in Twenty-Five Volumes" published by Peter Fenelon Collier & Son.
1902: Graduates London University with a B.A. (Honours)
1904-1905: Commissioned to translate "The Golden Ass" and "The Law Concerning Draped Virginity" for Charles Carrington. The rights to the translation of "The Golden Ass" is sold to a london underground publisher known as the "Imperial Press". In a letter to "The Academy and literature" following their negative review (mostly a character assassination based on the presence of few typos) he writes that his translations had been published without his knowing and against his will in the current state, and that he had not been given the chance to correct the finished pages. (Still, looking past the occasional typo every now and then and some inconsistent formatting, all of which I'm fixing for the ebook, it is still a very good translation.)
1914: The final appearance of his name in my sources in 1914, where he wins a lawsuit: "Byrne v. Statist Company (1914) 1.K.B.622.". The fact that this law suit constitutes a precedence in UK law the details are fairly easily available. I won't bore you with the details, but important for our story here is that it confirms that in 1914 he was a journalist with the "Financial Times". His switch, somewhere between 1905 and 1914 from translator to journalist would probably explain why there are no more known translations of his.

That's it. In other words all I've managed to get from my 20 or so hours is that the man was alive in 1878, and presumably some 15 years before that, and that he was still alive in 1914. My conclusion must be that the work probably is not yet in the PD in life+70 territories, but sadly given the lack of a date of death, assuming as one must, a potential life-span of at least 120 years, it will be another half a century before we can be sure if it really is PD in life+70 areas. Sadly, this is a state this work probably shares with multitudes of lesser known authors.