A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh is a children’s book by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Published in 1926, it is a collection of short stories about an anthropomorphic teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo. It is the first of two story collections by Milne about Winnie-the-Pooh, the second being The House at Pooh Corner (1928). The book was well-received at release, and was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies before the end of the year. Translated into over fifty languages, in 1958 a Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, was the first foreign-language book to be featured on the New York Times Best Seller List, and the only book in Latin ever to have been featured. Although Winnie-the-Pooh was published shortly after the end of the First World War, it takes place in a isolated world free from major issues, which scholar Paula T. Connolly describes as “largely Edenic” and later as an Arcadia standing in stark contrast to the world in which the book was created. She goes on to describe the book as nostalgic for a “rural and innocent world”. (Wikipedia)

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Faust directed by F. W. Murnau

Faust – A German Folktale (in German: Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage) is a 1926 silent film produced by Ufa, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman as Faust, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen/Marguerite, Frida Richard as her mother, Wilhelm Dieterle as her brother and Yvette Guilbert as Marthe Schwerdtlein, her aunt. Murnau’s film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe’s classic 1808 version. It has been praised for its special effects and is regarded as one of the finest examples of German Expressionist film. A 2006 review in The New York Times called it “one of the most astonishing visual experiences the silent cinema has to offer”, and Japanese film director Shinji Aoyama listed Faust as one of ten greatest films of all time in 2012. (Wikipedia)

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Sound recordings published prior to 1923

Thanks to the Music Modernization Act of 2018, all sound recordings published before 1923 will enter the US public domain on January 1, 2022 (and each year between 2023 and 2046, recordings older than 100 years will continue to be added). It’s a huge addition to the US public domain and will mean that the majority of recordings in the Library of Congress’ enormous National Jukebox collection will become free to download and re-use for any purpose. Comprising a collection of more than 10,000 acoustical recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925 (now owned by Sony Music Entertainment), the Jukebox contains a mixture of popular music (blues, ragtime, jazz, folk) and spoken word. Also check out this filtered view on the Internet Archive for a collection of 78s and cylinder recordings made prior to 1923.

For more info check out our blogpost.

The Scarlet Letter directed by Victor Sjöström

The Scarlet Letter is a 1926 American drama film based on the 1850 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne and directed by Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström (credited as Victor Seastrom). Now considered the best film adaptation of Hawthorne's novel which tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Prints of the film survive in the MGM/United Artists film archives and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. (Wikipedia)

Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck

Color Struck is an early play by the American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker Zora Neale Hurston which draws on her experience of growing up in an all-black rural region of Eatonville, Florida. Originally published in 1926 in Fire!! magazine, it was not actually staged during the Harlem Renaissance. The play’s title focuses on colorism, the idea that people in the black community were judged based on the hue of their skin. The lead character Emma is terrified that her partner will leave her for a lighter-skinned woman and the play plots the consequences of being “color struck” — escalating anger, low self-esteem, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Because of Emma’s “psychotic obsession with color”, she is unable to truly be happy, love, overcome oppression, and consequently is “the only miserable character.” (Wikipedia)

Read on at the University of Virginia.

William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay

Soldiers’ Pay is the first novel published by the American author William Faulkner, published when he was in his late twenties. The plot revolves around the return of a wounded aviator home to a small town in Georgia following the conclusion of the First World War. He is escorted by a veteran of the war, as well as a widow whose husband was killed during the conflict. The aviator himself suffered a horrendous head injury, and is left in a state of almost perpetual silence, as well as blindness. Several conflicts revolving around his return include the state of his engagement to his fiancée, the desire of the widow to break the engagement in order to marry the dying aviator herself, and the romantic intrigue surrounding the fiancée who had been less than faithful to the aviator in his absence. (Wikipedia)

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Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist

The Land of Mist (1926) is a novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories. Heavily influenced by Doyle’s growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on the character Edward Malone’s at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism. There is a suggestion in the book the deaths of “ten million young men” in World War I was punishment by the “Central Intelligence” (that is, God) for humanity’s laughing at the alleged evidence for life after death. (Wikipedia)

See content on our site relating to Arthur Conan Doyle here.

Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom by William Collins, Sons and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective.

In the story Poirot retires to a village near the home of a friend, Roger Ackroyd, to pursue a project to perfect vegetable marrows. Soon after, Ackroyd is murdered and Poirot must come out of retirement to solve the case.

The novel was well-received from its first publication. In 2013, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever. It is one of Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. Howard Haycraft included it in his list of the most influential crime novels ever written. (Wikipedia)

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D. H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent

The Plumed Serpent is a 1926 political novel by D. H. Lawrence, the idea for which had its roots in his experiences visiting Mexico in 1923. The novel’s plot concerns Kate Leslie, an Irish tourist who visits Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. She encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco. Within this movement, Cipriano is identified with Huitzilopochtli and Ramón with Quetzalcoatl. Kate eventually agrees to marry Cipriano, while the Men of Quetzalcoatl, with the help of a new President, bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with Quetzalcoatl worship. Critics have disagreed about the literary merit of the novel — some, including the novelist E. M. Forster and the writer John Middleton Murry, praising it as Lawrence’s best work and others dismissing it. According to John B. Vickery, while most critics admired “Lawrence’s masterful descriptions, his evocation of place and his handling of individual scenes”, many also criticised his “humorless obsession” with saving Mexico and the world. (Wikipedia)

Don Juan directed by Alan Crosland

Don Juan is a 1926 American romantic adventure film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue. The film is inspired by Lord Byron’s 1821 epic poem of the same name and the screenplay was written by Bess Meredyth with intertitles by Maude Fulton and Walter Anthony. Starring John Barrymore as the hand-kissing womanizer, the film has the most kisses in film history, with Barrymore kissing (all together) Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor 127 times. A print of Don Juan, including its Vitaphone soundtrack, still survives and is preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. (Wikipedia)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era. In spite of his teaching position at University of Cambridge, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the relatively slim 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise) (1921). His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously, the first and best-known being the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy. (Wikipedia)

Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein on Project Gutenberg

Ivor Novello

Ivor Novello (1893–1951) was a Welsh composer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. His first big hit was “Keep the Home Fires Burning” (1914), which was enormously popular during the First World War. After the war, Novello contributed numbers to several successful musical comedies and was eventually commissioned to write the scores of complete shows. He wrote his musicals in the style of operetta and often composed his music to the libretti of Christopher Hassall. In the 1920s, he turned to acting, first in British films and then on stage, with considerable success in both. He starred in two silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lodger and Downhill (both 1927). On stage, he played the title character in the first London production of Liliom (1926). Novello briefly went to Hollywood, but he soon returned to Britain, where he had more successes, especially on stage, appearing in his own lavish West End productions of musicals. The best known of these were Glamorous Night (1935) and The Dancing Years (1939). (Wikipedia)

See our post on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) staring Ivor Novello.

Miyamoto Yuriko

Miyamoto Yuriko (1899–1951) was a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, social activist, and literary critic active during the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. She is best known for her autobiographical fiction and involvement in proletarian and women's liberation movements. Miyamoto traveled for several years to the United States and the Soviet Union before returning to Japan, where her works were heavily censored and she was imprisoned repeatedly for her political views. She founded and operated a number of proletarian and feminist magazines during her career, many of which were also censored.vHer works include Nobuko, Banshū heiya (The Banshū Plain), Fūchisō (The Weathervane Plant), and other works of fiction and literary criticism. Much of her work is autobiographical and centers around themes of war, class, and gender relations. She continues to be honored by the Japanese Left for her vision and commitment toward Japanese women and the working class. (Wikipedia)

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide (1861–1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide’s career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, at the time of his death his obituary in The New York Times described him as “France’s greatest contemporary man of letters” and “judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti.” (Wikipedia)

Works by André Gide on Fadedpage and Project Gutenberg.

Louis Armstrong

Louis Daniel Armstrong (1901–1971), nicknamed “Satchmo”, “Satch”, and “Pops”, was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He is among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz.

Renowned his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to “cross over”, whose skin color was secondary to his music in an America that was extremely racially divided. He rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock Crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were highly restricted for black men of his era. (Wikipedia)

Stevie Smith

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (1902–1971), was an English poet and novelist. Though her poems were remarkably consistent in tone and quality throughout her life, their subject matter changed over time, with less of the outrageous wit of her youth and more reflection on suffering, faith and the end of life (including her best-known poem “Not Waving but Drowning”). She was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1966 and won the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 1969. She published three novels and nine volumes of poems in her lifetime (three more were released posthumously). (Wikipedia)

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) was an American photographer whose imagery helped to normalize marginalized groups and highlight the importance of proper representation of all people. She photographed a wide range of subjects including strippers, carnival performers, nudists, dwarves, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle-class families. She photographed her subjects in familiar settings: their homes, on the street, in the workplace, in the park. In his 2003 New York Times Magazine article, “Arbus Reconsidered,” Arthur Lubow states, “She was fascinated by people who were visibly creating their own identities—cross-dressers, nudists, sideshow performers, tattooed men, the nouveaux riches, the movie-star fans—and by those who were trapped in a uniform that no longer provided any security or comfort.” “[Arbus’s] work has had such an influence on other photographers that it is already hard to remember how original it was”, wrote the art critic Robert Hughes in a November 1972 issue of Time magazine. She has been called “a seminal figure in modern-day photography and an influence on three generations of photographers” and is widely considered to be among the most influential artists of the last century. (Wikipedia)