Short Fiction Various: Past Masters Ten (2020), v1, 19 Sep 2020

[Pulpmeister]

The Past Masters series of anthologies gathers up stray Public Domain short stories from newspapers and magazines. Most of them have never been included in the authors' own Collections, nor in any previous anthologies. The rest are in collections or anthologies which are not available digitally as yet.

Each Past Masters anthology runs to about 100,000 words. This tenth Anthology contains 19 stories, and a cumulative index to all stories contained in the ten volumes to date.

1: The Spirits of the Tower / "Waif Wander"
2: Warned by a Mouse / L. T. Meade
3: The Yellow Flag / L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
4: The Disintegration Machine / Arthur Conan Doyle
5: A Race with the Sun / L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax, M.D.
6: Anchored / C J Cutcliffe Hyne
7: The Phantom Hearse / "Waif Wander"
8: The Third Figure / Francis Henry Atkins
9: The Great Dives Elopement / Guy Boothby
10: The Family Honour / Guy Boothby
11: The Flirt / Guy Thorne
12: The Secret of Emu Plain / L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
13: Arson in the Jungle / George Allan England
14: One Law for the Rich / Stacy Aumonier
15: Wingfield's White Elephant / Thomas Charles Bridges
16: The Arrest of Captain Vandaleur / L T Meade and Robert Eustace
17: A Strange Goldfield / Guy Boothby
18: Amphistamium Formosum / Barry Pain
19: Proofs of Guilt / Cosmo Hamilton

Cumulative Index to Volume 10

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[matzerich]

wonderful, thank you very much
matthias

[Pulpmeister]

Thanks, Matthias

The online newspapers in Australia bristle with short stories and serial novels, and I've rescued quite a lot, specially some still in copyright.

I have around 100 short short crime stories by Australian Vince Kelly, a NSW police and political newspaper reporter, but he left no obvious heirs and I don't know how to find the copyright owner. So they sit on my hard drive until I do.

I did find the owner of the copyright of a bunch of short stories by Australian writer R Carson Gold, and sent them on. Maybe one day they'll appear in properly authorised print.

As to all the others, well, I am in the rescue business I suppose, so when I find these PD stories in newspapers I just assemble them into a book-length epub and put them up here.

There's many thousands more, and an astounding number of them are anonymous, so of course I can't post them here; or are by authors who are (a) unknown to Google, or (b) pseudonymous and unknown to Google, with the same result. The Braidwood NSW newspaper for many years ran novelettes as short two or three part serials, and every one is anonymous.

I now have 6 true-crime stories by Ladbroke Black, by the way, which together make up only 17,000 words. The nucleus of Past Masters 11 perhaps. Or Roy Glashan's Library, or both.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

There's many thousands more, and an astounding number of them are anonymous, so of course I can't post them here; or are by authors who are (a) unknown to Google, or (b) pseudonymous and unknown to Google, with the same result.

I am not a lawyer, and I am not the owner of this site. But if I have any say, my interpretation is:

* Works by authors for which no reliable information can be found, or by pseudonyms for which the real person behind is unknown (which is arguably the same thing) are as good as anonymous.

* Copyright for anonymous works (including the above) typically expires x years after publication. The value of x may change across countries.

* If the identity or death date of the author becomes known, the copyright status of the work may change accordingly.

For the purposes of "allowing" works in the MR library, I consider publication date + 70 years (i.e., as if the author died the year it was published). Even if there are later works published under the same name, since there is no data, there is also no evidence it is the same person, or it isn't a pseudonym.

[Pulpmeister]

Thanks, Jellby. I hadn't given thought to the anonymous works copyright rules. I was cautious because I thought that possibly it was just the rural newspaper chains' practice not to give authors' names on syndicated stories.

I'll have another look at those that were published anonymously in newspapers before 1950. I didn't even bother to read them; no name, no interest to me.