Here is a complete list of books that have entered the public domain this year 2020. In the US, copyright protection expires after 95 years. This is deemed to allow the new generation of authors, scholars and inventors to use these classics as basis for their work.
Since last year, 2019, copyrighted works began to enter the public domain after the halt in 1998 due to the Copyright Term Extension Act (or the Sonny Bono Act, or the Mickey Mouse Protection Act) which lengthened copyright protection for existing works by 20 years.
Thousands of copyrighted works from 1924 entered the public domain including books, films, sheet music and art. You can now use these works without having to be subjected to the copyright law. Things you can do include but are not limited to downloading, copying, translating, remixing, performing and adapting these works.
Here is a Complete List of Books in Public Domain Starting 2020
- The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs (View at Amazon)
- The Man in the Brown Suit and Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie (View at Amazon)
- A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (View at Amazon)
- The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann (View at Amazon)
- Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville (View at Amazon)
- Hotel Savoy and Rebellion by Joseph Roth (View at Amazon)
- The Dream by H. G. Wells (View at Amazon)
- The Old Maid by Edith Wharton (View at Amazon)
- The Life of Edward II of England (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England) by Bertolt Brecht (View at Amazon)
- The Fatal Eggs (Роковые яйца) by Mikhail Bulgakov (View at Amazon)
- Hay Fever by Noël Coward (View at Amazon)
- The Rat by Ivor Novello (View at Amazon)
- When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne (View at Amazon)
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada) by Pablo Neruda (View at Amazon)
- The Art of the Theatre by Sarah Bernhardt (View at Amazon)
- The Gift of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois (View at Amazon)
- My Further Disillusionment in Russia by Emma Goldman (View at Amazon)
- Literature and Revolution by Leon Trotsky (View at Amazon)
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (View at Amazon)
- The Story of a Great Schoolmaster by H. G. Wells (View at Amazon)
- Golden Wattle Cookery Book by Margaret Wylie (View at Amazon)
- A Gentleman of Courage by James Oliver Curwood (View at Amazon)
- Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey (View at Amazon)
- So Big by Edna Ferber (View at Amazon)
- The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (View at Amazon)
- The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy (View at Amazon)
- Gerald Cranston’s Lady by Gilbert Frankau (View at Amazon)
- Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion 1764–65 by Cleone Knox (View at Amazon)
- Something Childish and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield (View at Amazon)
- Dr. Doolittle’s Circus by Hugh Lofting (View at Amazon)
- The Dream Coach by Anne Parrish (View at Amazon)
- The Treasures of Typhon by Eden Phillpotts (View at Amazon)
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (View at Amazon)
- Precious Bane by Mary Webb (View at Amazon)
- Desire Under The Elms by Eugene O’Neill (View at Amazon)
- We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (View at Amazon)
You can now find these books in Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and other ebook sources of public domain materials.
Remember to always double check the publication date of any of these books and if it is indeed part of the public domain before doing any work in it.