Book People Archive

Cather (Re: What's Not in Gutenberg)

jrusk@[redacted] wrote:
> 
> I recently created a database of all the etexts I have
> stored for personal use. In the process I audited the entire
> Project Gutenberg corpus and discovered, much to my
> surprise, that there are several major works that are not in
> the Gutenberg files (yet).
> 
> This is not meant to be a criticism of PG. In fact, the
> great value of PG IMHO is that it is replicated in so many
> places over the net. I'm sure that Gutenberg volunteers are
> probably working on the following. (I am restricting this
> list to works *already* in the public domain somewhere on
> the net.)
> 
> 1. The Professor's House (Cather)

One warning: While the other items in the list, on a quick glance, do
appear to be public-domain, I'm not sure this one's actually in the public
domain in the US.  It came out in 1925, and there's a copyright renewal
in 1953.

It's currently available on Michigan's HTI site.   When I queried
them about it years ago, the person who wrote back said that they
could legally put it on-line, but didn't give details.  I don't know
if there was some other way that this book lost copyright, such as by
lack of notice, or whether they simply had had permission to put it up.
(Nowadays, I'd probably be stricter about asking for specific evidence
on this, but this was many years back, and I've basically "grandfathered"
these old listings from well-established sites unless I hear from
copyright holders that there's a problem, or the sites take them down
themselves.)

Like all other works by Cather published in her lifetime, this book
*is* in the public domain in Canada, and other "life+50 years" countries.
(It appears that this etext was originally prepared in Canada.)
But since Gutenberg is US-based, they might hesitate about doing this
one themselves.

There does appear to be a good deal of interest in Cather.  I recently
heard from someone who'd transcribed one of her short stories (unfortunately,
without realizing that it was still copyrighted in the US, where he
was located).  Most of Cather's pre-1923 books are on-line at this point.
The main exceptions are:
             
  _April Twilights_ (1903), a book of verse that was her first published
     book.  A revised and expanded edition came out in 1923; the original
     1903 edition is not easy to find, but is carried by some libraries,
     and has also been reprinted more recently.

  _My Autobiography_ "by S. S. McClure" (1914).  McClure published a lot
     of Cather's early work, and according to various catalog records,
     Cather ghostwrote this book for him.

  _The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science_
     "by Georgine Milmine" (1907-9).  Milmine originally researched this
     book, but the manuscript she produced was not publishable, and Cather was
     called in to check her research and do any edits and rewrites necessary
     for publication.  While Cather publicly downplayed her work on this book,
     some scholars looking through her correspondence conclude that nearly
     all of the book as published was actually written by Cather (though
     building on Milmine's notes).  Some of Eddy's followers objected
     strongly to this unauthorized biography, and after its book publication,
     copies became rather hard to find for a long time.  But after the
     copyright expired, reprints started appearing.  Recent reprints credit
     both Cather and Milmine.
             
John