Your absolute no-miss books in the public domain

[stop__dreaming]

A Christmas Carol
The Picture of Dorian Gray

[RbnJrg]

I would like to add:

Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha)
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
The Thousand Nights and a Night (version of Richard Burton - 10 vols.)

[Greg Anos]

Any collection of short stories by Saki (H R R Munro).

A Prince and A Pauper Mark Twain

[crich70]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

N.B. H. Beam Piper's works are only PD in USA, and then only some of them.

I believe the same can be said of some of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of them are PD in England but not yet in the U.S. for some reason. Or at least that was the case a few yrs back.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by crich70

I believe the same can be said of some of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of them are PD in England but not yet in the U.S. for some reason. Or at least that was the case a few yrs back.

Yes, that's true. Some of the short stories are still in copyright in the US because of the the complicated history of copyright laws in the US, and the last one won't be out of copyright until 1st January 2023.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Yes, that's true. Some of the short stories are still in copyright in the US because of the the complicated history of copyright laws in the US, and the last one won't be out of copyright until 1st January 2023.

Conan Doyle died in 1930. Even with Disney copyright laws, how could anything he wrote still be in copyright after 2005?

[xg4bx]

Any early sci-fi/horror from Verne, Wells, and Burroughs to Poe and Lovecraft.

[SteveEisenberg]

I like questioning the premise. So here's my comment:

Human taste is so various that, even among people who read a lot, there is no such thing as a no-miss book.

P.S. However -- Ivanhoe.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by bfisher

Conan Doyle died in 1930. Even with Disney copyright laws, how could anything he wrote still be in copyright after 2005?

Because some short stories were first published in the US after 1922, and were properly renewed. They therefore have a 95-year copyright term. The last such short story was published in 1927. 1927+95 = 2022, so it'll come out of copyright on 1st January 2023 (since publication is deemed to happen on the last day of the year of publication)

[crich70]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Because some short stories were first published in the US after 1922, and were properly renewed. They therefore have a 95-year copyright term. The last such short story was published in 1927. 1927+95 = 2022, so it'll come out of copyright on 1st January 2023 (since publication is deemed to happen on the last day of the year of publication)

I think it was Collier's Magazine here in the U.S. wasn't it and they usually published the stories some time after The Strand Magazine had. No doubt in part due to how long it took for a manuscript to cross the ocean back then. And of course the time for The Strand to receive it, accept it and send the original back to Arthur Conan Doyle as well.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Because some short stories were first published in the US after 1922, and were properly renewed. They therefore have a 95-year copyright term. The last such short story was published in 1927. 1927+95 = 2022, so it'll come out of copyright on 1st January 2023 (since publication is deemed to happen on the last day of the year of publication)

Thanks for the clarification. I had not realized that it was possible to have such a long copyright term.

[gmw]

I'm not sure I'd classify them as "absolute no-miss", but I did enjoy many of the stories by H. Rider Haggard. "King Solomon's Mines", "She", "Allan Quatermain" etc.

[RbnJrg]

I forgot to mention:

"The Great Gatsby"
"Random Harvest"

Both are in the public domain in Project Gutenberg Australia.

[tch65721]

I enjoyed The Virginian by Owen Wister.

White Fang and The Call of the Wild by Jack London were favorites when I was young.

[Greg Anos]

Kipling - The Jungle books, Kim, his poetry...