Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf which centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no direct action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The story is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family, living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland — including the maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the highbrow Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. From Mr. Ramsay’s seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf examines tensions and allegiances and shows that the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life are unending. Among the book’s many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art and the problem of perception. In 1998, the Modern Library named To the Lighthouse no. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923. (Wikipedia)

Already public domain in countries with a “life plus 70 years” and “life plus 50 years” copyright.

Read at Faded Page and Project Gutenberg (US text)

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Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction silent film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harboul’s 1925 novel of the same name. Intentionally written as a treatment, it is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction movie, being among the first feature-length film of that genre. Made in Germany during the Weimar period, it is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master. The film’s message is encompassed in the final inter-title: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart”. While Metropolis met a mixed reception upon release, it is now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, ranking 35th in Sight & Sound’s 2012 critics’ poll. In 2001, the film was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, the first film thus distinguished. (Wikipedia)

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Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf — the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse — was originally published in Germany in 1927 and first translated into English in 1929. The story is presented as a manuscript written by its protagonist, a middle-aged man named Harry Haller and in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse’s spiritual world during the 1920s. In the preface to the novel’s 1960 edition, Hesse wrote that Steppenwolf was “more often and more violently misunderstood” than any of his other books. Hesse felt that his readers focused only on the suffering and despair that are depicted in Haller’s life, thereby missing the possibility of transcendence and healing. Close friends and longtime readers of Hesse criticized the novel for its perceived lack of morality in its open depiction of sex and drug use, a criticism that indeed remained the primary rebuff of the novel for many years. Popular interest was renewed in the 1960s — specifically in the psychedelic movement — primarily because it was seen as a counterculture book, and because of its depiction of free love and explicit drug use. (Wikipedia)

Already public domain in countries with a “life plus 50 years” copyright.

James Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach

Pomes Penyeach — a collection of thirteen short poems written by James Joyce — was written over a 20-year period, from 1904 to 1924, and originally published on 7 July 1927 by Shakespeare and Company, for the price of one shilling (twelve pennies) or twelve francs. The title is a play on “poems” and pommes (the French word for apples) which are here offered at “a penny each” in either currency. It was the custom for Irish tradespeople of the time to offer their customers a “tilly” (in Irish, tuilleadh) or extra serving — just as English bakers had developed the tradition of the “baker’s dozen”, offering thirteen loaves instead of twelve. The first poem of Pomes Penyeach is entitled “Tilly” and represents the bonus offering of this penny-a-poem collection. Although paid scant attention on its initial publication, this slender volume (which contains fewer than 1000 words in total) has proven surprisingly durable, and a number of its poems (particularly “Tilly”, “A flower given to my daughter”, “On the beach at Fontana”, and “Bahnhofstrasse”) continue to appear in anthologies to this day.

Pomes Penyeach contains a number of Joycean neologisms (“rosefrail”, “moongrey” and “sindark”, for example) created by melding two words into a new compound. The word “love” appears thirteen times in this collection of thirteen short poems (and the word “heart” appears almost as frequently) in a variety of contexts. Sometimes romantic love is intended, in tones that vary from sentimental or nostalgic (“O sighing grasses,/ Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!”) to scathing (“They mouth love’s language. Gnash/ The thirteen teeth/ Your lean jaws grin with”). Yet at its best Joyce’s poetry achieves, like his prose, a sense of vitality and loving compassion. (“From whining wind and colder/ Grey sea I wrap him warm/ And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder/ And boyish arm. // Around us fear, descending/ Darkness of fear above/ And in my heart how deep unending/ Ache of love!”) (Wikipedia)

Already public domain in countries with a “life plus 70 years” and “life plus 50 years” copyright.

Read at Wikisource and British Library

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James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones

God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse is a 1927 book of poems by James Weldon Johnson patterned after traditional African-American religious oratory. Scholars Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West have identified the collection as one of Johnson’s two most notable works, the other being Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Johnson explains the title’s use of the trombone by discussing the vocal and rhetorical qualities of a preacher he had recently heard who, he felt, exemplified the compelling and persuasive nature of the folk preacher, naming the trombone as “the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice — and with greater amplitude.” (Wikipedia)

Already public domain in countries with a “life plus 70 years” and “life plus 50 years” copyright.

Read at University of North Carolina

Franz Kafka’s Amerika

Amerika — also known, in English, as The Man Who Disappeared, The Missing Person and as Lost in America — is the incomplete first novel by Franz Kafka, written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled “The Stoker” and incorporates many details of the experiences of his relatives who had emigrated to the United States. The story describes the bizarre wanderings of sixteen-year-old European immigrant Karl Roßmann, who was forced to go to New York City to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. It is more explicitly humorous but slightly more realistic (except in the last chapter) than most of Kafka’s works, but it shares the same motifs of an oppressive and intangible system putting the protagonist repeatedly in bizarre situations. (Wikipedia)

Already public domain in countries with a “life plus 70 years” and “life plus 50 years” copyright.

Read at zeno.org

Agatha Christie’s “The Tuesday Night Club”

The short story “The Tuesday Night Club” by Agatha Christie features the print debut of Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple. First published in 1927 in The Royal Magazine, the short story concerns a club of friends who meet every Tuesday to take turns narrating a real-life mystery which the others attempt to solve. Its first publication in book form was in the collection Best Detective Stories of the Year 1928 published by Faber and Faber, and later appeared as the opening chapter in The Thirteen Problems (1932). (Wikipedia)

Edward S. Curtis

Edward Sherriff Curtis (1868–1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people. His life-defining project was The North American Indian. Spanning forty volumes and four decades, the goal of the project was not just to photograph but also document as much of Native American traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared. He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907, “The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost.” Over the project’s course Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American language and music, and took over 40,000 photographic images of members of over 80 tribes. In addition to recording tribal lore and history, and describing traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs, he wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders. In 1912, he set about making In the Land of the Head Hunters, a 1914 silent film fictionalizing the world of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada. It was written and directed by Curtis and acted entirely by Kwakwaka’wakw native people. (Wikipedia)

Works by Edward S. Curtis on Wikimedia Commons and Library of Congress

See our post on Curtis’ photographs of Kwakwaka’wakw Ceremonial Dress and Masks (ca. 1914)

Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun’s work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, works of non-fiction and some essays. A pioneer in psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, he influenced authors such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, John Fante, and Ernest Hemingway. Isaac Bashevis Singer called Hamsun “the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect — his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun”. (Wikipedia)

Works by Knut Hamsun at Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive

Frances Benjamin Johnston

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864–1952) was an early American photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various photographic series featuring African Americans and Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps her most famous work is her self-portrait as the liberated “New Woman”, with petticoats showing and a beer stein in hand. Johnston advocated for the role of women in the burgeoning art of photography. In 1897 the Ladies’ Home Journal published Johnston’s article “What a Woman Can Do With a Camera”, describing how to achieve artistic and financial success in photography as a profession. With Zaida Ben-Yusuf, Johnston co-curated an exhibition of photographs by twenty-eight women photographers at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1899, Johnston was commissioned by Hollis Burke Frissell to photograph the buildings and students of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia in order to show the success of this primarily black institution. The resulting series — considered among her most important work — was displayed at The Exhibit of American Negroes of the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. Her life partner was Mattie Edwards Hewitt, a photographer who specialised in architecture and with whom she established the “Johnston-Hewitt Studio” in New York City in 1913. (Wikipedia)

Benedetto Croce

Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician, who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography and aesthetics. In most regards, Croce was a liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire, free trade, and had considerable influence on other Italian intellectuals, including both Marxist Antonio Gramsci and Italian Fascist Giovanni Gentile. Croce was the president of PEN International, the worldwide writers’ association, from 1949 until 1952. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times. He is also noted for his “major contributions to the rebirth of Italian democracy”. (Wikipedia)

Works by Benedetto Croce at Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive

Fletcher Henderson

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson (1897–1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and, along with Duke Ellington, is considered one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history. Henderson’s influence was vast. He helped bridge the gap between the Dixieland and the swing eras. He was often known as “Smack” Henderson (because of smacking sounds he made with his lips). (Wikipedia)

Recordings involving Fletcher Henderson at Library of Congress

Elizabeth Robins

Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) was an actress, playwright, novelist, and suffragette. As an actress, she won many admirers including Oscar Wilde who said (of her role in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1889) that “you have definitely asserted your position as an actress of the first order. Your future on our stage is assured.” Early in her time in London, she became enamored with Ibsen’s plays and with Marion Lea with whom she would form a joint management company, making this the “first step toward the theatre that Robins had dreamed of … a theatre of independent management and artistic standards.” Finding work in “‘women’s plays’ written by men like Ibsen,” Robins and Lea brought strong female characters to the stage, such as Hedda Gabler. From then on, Hedda became synonymous with Robins on the English stage and she and Lea would go on to produce a handful of Ibsen’s other ‘New Woman’ plays and she became known as “Ibsen’s High Priestess”. Robins also wrote many novels (some under the name of C. E. Raimond) including Magnetic North (1904) and Come and Find Me (1908) about the search for her missing brother. She became a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, as well as the Women’s Social and Political Union, although she broke with the WSPU over its increasing use of violent militancy. She remained a strong advocate of women’s rights, however, and used her gifts as a public speaker and writer on behalf of the cause. In 1907, her book The Convert was published and was later turned into a play that became synonymous with the suffrage movement. (Wikipedia)

Works by Elizabeth Robins at Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive

Cecil Day-Lewis

Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (1904–1972) was an Irish-born, British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. During World War II, Day-Lewis worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information for the UK government, and also served in the Musbury branch of the British Home Guard. While studying at Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of the circle gathered around W. H. Auden and helped him to edit Oxford Poetry (1927). His first collection of poems, Beechen Vigil, appeared in 1925. In his youth and during the disruption and suffering of the Great Depression, Day-Lewis adopted communist views, becoming a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1935 to 1938. His early poetry was marked by didacticism and a focus on social themes. In 1937, he edited The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution and in the introduction supported a popular front against a “Capitalism that has no further use for culture”. During the Second World War, his work was less influenced by Auden and he was developing a more traditional style of lyricism. Some critics believe that he reached his full stature as a poet in Word Over All (1943), when he finally distanced himself from Auden. After the war, he joined the publisher Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor. He is the father of actor Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis. (Wikipedia)

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Marianne Moore

Marianne Craig Moore (1887–1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1918, three years after having her first poems published in The Egoist and Poetry, Moore moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village, where she socialized with many avant-garde artists, especially those associated with Others magazine. The innovative poems she was writing at that time received high praise from Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, and later, Wallace Stevens. Her second book, Observations, won the Dial Award in 1924 and, from 1925 to 1929, she edited The Dial magazine, a literary and cultural journal. In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize by Poetry magazine, and in 1951, her Collected Poems won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize. In the book’s introduction, T. S. Eliot wrote, “My conviction has remained unchanged for the last 14 years that Miss Moore’s poems form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time.” (Wikipedia)

Works by Marianne Moore at Project Gutenberg

Jamini Roy

Jamini Roy (1887–1972) was an Indian painter honored with the Government of India award of Padma Bhushan in 1954. Roy remains one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, another praised Indian artist and instructor. Roy began his career as a traditional portrait painter but, in the early 1920s, began to embrace a new style rooted in Bengali folk traditions. (Wikipedia)

Works by Jamina Roy at Wikimedia Commons