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
- The Man in the Brown Suit and Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie
- A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
- The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann
- Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville
- Hotel Savoy and Rebellion by Joseph Roth
- The Dream by H. G. Wells
- The Old Maid by Edith Wharton
- The Life of Edward II of England (Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England) by Bertolt Brecht
- The Fatal Eggs (Роковые яйца) by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Hay Fever by Noël Coward
- The Rat by Ivor Novello
- When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada) by Pablo Neruda
- The Art of the Theatre by Sarah Bernhardt
- The Gift of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
- My Further Disillusionment in Russia by Emma Goldman
- Literature and Revolution by Leon Trotsky
- The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
- The Story of a Great Schoolmaster by H. G. Wells
- Golden Wattle Cookery Book by Margaret Wylie
- A Gentleman of Courage by James Oliver Curwood
- Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey
- So Big by Edna Ferber
- The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy
- Gerald Cranston’s Lady by Gilbert Frankau
- Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion 1764–65 by Cleone Knox
- Something Childish and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
- Dr. Doolittle’s Circus by Hugh Lofting
- The Dream Coach by Anne Parrish
- The Treasures of Typhon by Eden Phillpotts
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- Precious Bane by Mary Webb
- Desire Under The Elms by Eugene O’Neill
- We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
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.
