On January 1, 2025, all works published in 1929 entered the United States Public Domain. To celebrate the event, HathiTrust prepared a collection of 1929 Publications (over 76K volumes total) which are now open with full view access to users in the United States. The collection includes editions of popular magazines and journals such as Time, The New Yorker, Opportunity, The Dial, The Crisis, Vogue, and Publishers Weekly, which offer a window into what people were reading and thinking. While 1929 is famously the final year of the Roaring Twenties and the start of the Great Depression, you wouldn’t know it from perusing these primary resources. Indeed, few people living at the end of 1929 seemed aware that the world economy would soon take a dire turn, even after the stock market slumped in September, and Black Thursday and Black Tuesday (on October 24 and October 29 respectively) saw precipitous drops. There were still indications and expectations that the market would recover and the good economic times would continue, so much so that Time Magazine’s financial column is almost tongue in cheek when describing the results of the Stock Market declines, writing in the November 18 issue:
Through last week optimism was certainly more pronounced than pessimism. Stock brokers were far more pessimistic than businessmen. Being, especially in the lower ranks, a provincially Manhattan lot, they seemed to think the Stock Market would be disgraced if Business did not humbly follow its lead. Outside of lower Manhattan, Detroit was the gloomiest spot, the depth being reached by the jocular motor executive who seemed to feel that never again would any U.S. citizen be able to buy anything except a Ford. (see middle column)
Advertisements can also offer a glimpse into the zeitgeist of a culture. Contradicting the above quote are numerous ads for luxury cars that continued to appear in the November and December issues of Time and The New Yorker, suggesting optimism that Americans could still afford Studebakers, Marmons, Buicks, Roosevelts, Pierce-Arrows, Rolls-Royces, and Lincolns. From perusing these magazines and their advertisements, it appears that it would be months, at least, before the stock market crash and its many ramifications penetrated the national consciousness – reducing the “roaring” of the Twenties to a low rumble.
Below we call out just a small handful of titles from the tens of thousands of interesting and diverse voices published in 1929 that are now public domain and openly available in the United States.
POETRY
John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benét
This epic poem about the American Civil War won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1929. It features protagonist John Brown, the radical abolitionist who was executed after leading a raid against the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859. The poem oscillates between verse and prose and includes both historical and fictional characters. An April 1929 review in Opportunity Journal raves: “It is a great, vital, permanent American document shot through with beauty.” A version was performed as a play at San Quentin in 2002, and a documentary film was made about the project.
Paul Johnston was a fine press printer, book designer, and artist who helped define a new American style of book design in the 1920s and 1930s. The Poetry Quartos has a unique format, it consists of 12 pamphlets, each with a single poem by an American poet, bound together. Johnston designed covers for each pamphlet. They include: “Prelude” by Conrad Aiken; “Sagacity” by William Rose Bennet; “Roots” by Witter Bynner; “The Aspirant” by Theodore Drieser; “The Lovely Shall be Choosers” by Robert Frost; “Red Roses for Bronze” by H.D.; “Body and Stone: A Song Cycle” by Alfred Kreymborg; “Rigamarole, Rigamarole” by Vachel Lindsay; “The Prodigal Son” by Edwin Arlington Robinson; “Monolog for Mothers (Aside)” by Genevieve Tiggard; “Adirondack Cycle” by Louis Untermeyer; and “Birthday Sonnet” by Elinor Wylie
An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry compiled and edited by Marcus Graham
Poet and editor, Benjamin Musser, enthuses over this collection of revolutionary poems by close to 400 poets from 20 countries in the 1929 edition of Contemporary Verse:
...an articulate protest for all time, by the great poets of all time past and today… It is more than protest, it is vision; for revolution is constructive rather than destructive, and always poets have been at the helm in revaluation and world brotherhood, poets who, said Shelley, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I feel this to be true, I know it to be true. And this anthology is tangible proof that it is true.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIR, BIOGRPAHY
Born to Be by Taylor Gordon with illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias
Born to Be is the autobiography of the African American singer and performer, Taylor Gordon (1893-1971). He was born and raised in the small, mostly white, town of Sulphur Springs, Montana but moved to New York at age 17 and became a dynamic part of the Harlem Renaissance. His autobiography describes his childhood in the “cultured cowtown” where he was part of a poor, yet musical, family and held many offbeat jobs. One such job was as assistant to John Ringling, of circus fame, who supported his move to New York. It also describes his later adventures as part of a vaudeville act, with pianist J. Rosamond Johnson, singing spirituals. Together, they toured Europe and performed for the King and Queen of England.
Music at Midnight by Muriel Draper
Muriel Draper (1886-1952) was an important American modernist literary figure who hosted salons in London and New York. Her memoir covers the musical salon she hosted in London, from 1911 to 1914, where she lived with her husband, Paul, an aspiring tenor. Her friends and guests included Igor Stravinsky, Vaslav Nijinsky, Pablo Casals, Gertrude Stein, John Singer Sargent, and Henry James, among many others. The memoir was a bestseller at the time. Later, in the 1930’s she became a communist activist, and from 1937-1938 she hosted an NBC radio show called “It’s a Woman’s World.”
The Story of My Experiments with Truth, volume 2 by Mahatma Gandhi
This is part two of the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) the anti-colonialist human rights activist, who pioneered the use of non-violent passive resistance, and led the successful campaign for India’s independence. Volume one of the English translation was published in 1927. Together, the two volumes cover his life from early childhood up to 1921. He wrote it in weekly installments from 1925 to 1929 that were serialized in journals.
The Untold Story; The Life of Isadora Duncan, 1921-1927 by Mary Desti and Isadora Duncan's Russian Days and Her Last Years in France by Irma Duncan and Allan Ross Macdougall
Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) is known as the “Mother of Modern Dance” whose revolutionary dance style spread from the United States to Europe and the Soviet Union - all places where she lived, worked, and performed. She died tragically in 1927, the same year her autobiography was published. These two biographies, written by her foster daughter and by her friends respectively, aim to fill in for the books Duncan had planned to write before her untimely death.
The Pedro Gorino; The Adventures of a Negro Sea-captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in his Attempts to Found an Ethiopian Empire by Captain Harry Dean, with the assistance of Sterling North
This is the autobiography and sea narrative of Harry Dean (1864-1935), an African-American sailor who supported the Pan-African movement. He was born in Philadelphia but spent much of his adolescent and adult life sailing in Africa and Europe. In 1900, he purchased the ship, The Pedro Gorino, which he captained. In 1920, he returned to the United States and set up a nautical school (the Dean Habashi Nautical College) to train African-American sailors in San Francisco. Dean began his autobiography in 1928, when he met Sterling North, a university student with literary aspirations. The book was published a year later.
Grandmother Brown's Hundred Years, 1827-1927 by Harriet Connor Brown
Maria Dean Foster Brown was born in Ohio in 1827 and later moved with her husband to a homestead in Fort Madison, Iowa. While she was an “ordinary” woman who raised seven children, she was also a storyteller who lived through an extraordinary century of American history. She has stories of family members who helped with the Underground Railroad and fought for the Union in the Civil War. She was interested in politics - she adored Abraham Lincoln and was appalled when Teddy Roosevelt removed “In God we trust” from American coins - but she did not support women’s suffrage or want to vote. This biography was written by her daughter-in-law, Harriet Connor Brown (1872-1962), a journalist, author, and women’s rights activist, who interviewed her mother-in-law extensively following her 99th birthday. This book was the result. It won the Atlantic Monthly prize for biography in 1929.
NON-FICTION
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Woolf’s famous essay on women as creators may be best - or at least amusingly - summed up by this 1929 advertisement from her publisher in The Nation:
"WOMEN," asks Virginia Woolf , "why have men always had power and wealth and influence and fame, while women had nothing but children?" This eternal question, suggested to Mrs. Woolf's mind by lunching off partridge in a man's college and dining off prunes and custard in woman's dormitory, - leads her fruitlessly to the British Museum and eventually to certain very interesting conclusions of her own.” (see here)
Woolf published an additional essay in 1929 in which she explores women and writing - “Dr. Burney’s Evening Party” about the English novelist Fanny Burney (1752-1840) and her relationship with her father.
Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress by Samuel Beckett et al.
This is a collection of essays by the writerly friends and acquaintances of James Joyce who were well acquainted with his experimental “work in progress.” The work, Finnegans Wake, wasn’t actually published until ten years later, in 1939. Two critical and amusing letters “of protest” are included. This Exagmination was first published in only 96 copies by Silvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company.
Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do by James Thurber and E.B. White
This early work by two acclaimed authors spoofs the serious Freudian-influenced sex advice books that were popular at the time. Thurber and White became friends while working together on the editorial staff in the early years of The New Yorker. Thurber would later become famous for his cartoons (52 of which adorn the pages of this book - with a note of explanation at the back) and humorous stories. White would become most famous for his children’s books, which include Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. The two friends were concerned they wouldn’t even be able to get the book published, but it became a best seller and launched their literary careers. For a good laugh, see the Q&A at the back about a snail in a fishtank.
FICTION
The Omnibus of Crime edited by Dorothy L. Sayers
Sixty-two stories and almost 1200 pages make up this anthology of crime stories edited by Dorothy Sayers, who is considered to be one of the four “Queens of Crime Fiction”. Sayers hoped to present “a kind of bird's - eye” view of the genre. She concludes her 31-page Introduction:
Every tale in this book is guaranteed to have puzzled or horrified somebody; with any luck at all, some of them may puzzle and horrify you. What a piece of work is man, that he should enjoy this kind of thing! A very odd piece of work indeed, a mystery!
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
Described by George Orwell as “much the best of the English war books” and considered one of the great anti-war novels of the First World War, Death of a Hero is that, and more. Written by a successful modernist poet who fought in the trenches for Britain, it is a loosely autobiographical “jazz novel” of three parts. The novel’s protagonist is bitterly aggrieved at the hypocrisy of British society and its attitude towards sex. Like many works from the time that grappled with sexuality and included language considered to be profane, it faced British and American censorship. The author includes a note describing his struggles with censorship, and concludes: “I have therefore asked my publishers to delete everything they consider objectionable, and to substitute asterisks for every word deleted. I would rather have my book mutilated than say what I do not believe.” Later editions of the book include the redacted content but are not yet in the public domain.
Ultima Thule by Henry Handel Richardson
Australian writer Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson published under the male pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson. Ultima Thule is the third volume in a trilogy (including Australia Felix, published in 1917 and The Way Home, published in 1925) that were later collected and published in 1930 under the title The Fortunes of Richard Mahony which chronicles the fortunes of Dr. Richard Mahony who, as a young man, runs an emporium in Australia's goldfields but goes on to study medicine and become a successful surgeon. Loosely based on the author’s parents, the novel depicts the onset of mental illness and its devastating consequences. Ultima Thule brought overnight fame to Richardson, who is considered an important figure in Australian literary history.