Public Domain Stories

A list of literature (stories, poems, novels, etc.) that are in the Public Domain. In the USA, this includes any story first published before 1929. A comprehensive list is impossible to make; Project Gutenberg has over forty thousand in English alone.

Also, a work's PD status will vary between countries due to differences in copyright laws. For example, the status of the Fu Manchu series differs radically between several significant markets:

• In the US, only the first three books are PD.
• In the EU, UK, Australia, and Mexico, none of the series is PD.^Explanation Under EU, UK, and Australian law, works by an individual creator are under copyright for 70 years after the creator's death. Spain had a "life plus 80" term until it harmonized its copyright laws with the rest of the EU in 1987, and the "life plus 80" term still applies for works of creators who died before 1987. The term under Mexican law is 100 years after death. Fu Manchu's creator Sax Rohmer didn't die until 1959.
• In Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, the entire series is PD.^Explanation Instead of life plus 70 years, Canada's copyright term prior to 2022 was life plus 50 years, and the extension was not made retroactive. Japan made the same change in 2018, and also didn't make it retroactive. NZ still uses "life plus 50". The series thus entered the PD in all three countries in 2010.

Compare Public Domain Character.

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Subcategories

• Classic Literature
• 18th Century Literature
• 19th Century Literature
• Literature of the 1900s
• Literature of the 1910s

Literature

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Around the World in Eighty Days
• The Art of War (Machiavelli)
• The Art of War (Sun Tzu)
• The Beautiful and Damned
• The Black Arrow
• Blandings Castle - the first two books only
• Bleak House
• The Brothers Karamazov
• Caleb Williams
• The Call of the Wild
• Candide
• The Canterbury Tales
• Captains Courageous
• A Christmas Carol
• The Chronicles of Barsetshire
• The Coming Race
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
• The Coral Island
• Crime and Punishment
• David and the Phoenix
• David Copperfield
• The Divine Comedy
• Dom Casmurro
• Emma
• Enoch Arden
• Eric, or Little by Little
• The Faerie Queene
• Flatland
• Frankenstein
• Great Expectations
• The Great Gatsby
• Gulliver's Travels
• Guy Mannering
• The Hampdenshire Wonder
• Hayy ibn Yaqzan
• Heidi
• Hester
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Ivanhoe
• Jane Eyre
• Jeeves and Wooster - the early short stories and books only
• John Carter of Mars – the first five books in the US; the entire series in the EU apart from Spain, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Mexico;^note before 1982, Mexico's term was life plus 30, and none of that country's three later term extensions (to life plus 50, 75, and 100) were retroactive. none of the series in Spain.
• John's Lily
• Journey to the Center of the Earth
• The Jungle Book
• Kama Sutra
• The Kellys and the O'Kellys
• Kenilworth
• King Kong (1933) novelization - significantly the only media in the King Kong franchise to have entered public domain, allowing the production of a number of unlicensed sequels, adaptations, and modifications (usually timed to cash in on the release of a recently released King Kong film), such as The Mighty Kong, Kong Reborn, and Kong: King of Skull Island (the last of which has its own Alternate Continuity spawned from it).
• King Solomon's Mines
• Lady Susan
• The Land of Oz series (books published before 1929), and an additional 7 that failed to have their copyright renewed, including
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • The Marvelous Land of Oz
  • Ozma of Oz
  • Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
  • The Road to Oz
  • The Emerald City of Oz
  • The Patchwork Girl of Oz
  • Tik-Tok of Oz
  • The Scarecrow of Oz
  • Rinkitink in Oz
  • The Lost Princess of Oz
  • The Tin Woodman of Oz
  • The Magic of Oz
  • Glinda of Oz
  • The Lost King of Oz
  • Handy Mandy in Oz
  • Queen Zixi of Ix
• La Vendée
• Little Women
• The Lord of Bembibre
• The Mac Dermots Of Ballycloran
• Mansfield Park
• Les Misérables
• The Monastery
• Mrs. Dalloway
• My Father's Dragon (the sequels had their copyrights renewed, but not the first book)
• Nicholas Nickleby
• Northanger Abbey
• Old Mortality
• Oliver Twist
• Orlando: A Biography
• Otto of the Silver Hand
• Palliser
• Persuasion
• Peter Pan, though not in the UK, where a hospital earns perpetual royalties.
• The Pirate
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Pride and Prejudice
• The Prince and the Pauper
• Psmith
• The Purple Cloud
• Quest for Fire: The original French version La Guerre du feu is public domain but the various English translations are not.
• Raffles
• Ragged Dick
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
• Reggie Pepper
• Reynard the Fox
• Right Ho, Jeeves
• Robinson Crusoe
• Rob Roy
• Rosaleen among the Artists
• The Sea Fairies
• The Sea Wolf
• Sense and Sensibility
• Sherlock Holmes - all of the original Arthur Conan Doyle canon
• The Sorrows of Satan
• The Story of Valentine and His Brother
• The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• The Swiss Family Robinson
• The Sword of Saint Ferdinand
• The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Tarzan – any story published before 1929 in the US; same status as John Carter of Mars in other territories
• A Tale of Two Cities
• This Side of Paradise
• The Time Machine
• To Build a Fire
• Treasure Island
• Ulysses
• Ukridge - (the stories published before 1929)
• War and Peace
• The Water-Babies
• Waverley
• The Way We Live Now
• Wet Magic
• White Fang
• Winnie the Pooh - the first two books are public domain in the U.S. as of 2024; the British copyright on the text will expire in 2027, at which point all A. A. Milne works will be public domain in the UK. However, the illustrations will not become PD in the UK until 2047; illustrator E.H. Shepard lived until 1976.
• The Worm Ouroboros
• Wuthering Heights
• The Young Diana
• Zorro - the original literature works by McCulley, The Curse of Capistrano and The Further Adventures of Zorro

Mythology & Religion

• Arthurian Legend
• The Bible: While the actual text is in the public domain and many versions of the Bible are free of copyright, certain versions of it are copyrighted in some jurisdictions (e.g., the King James Bible is under perpetual copyright in the United Kingdom).
• Beowulf
• Brazilian Folklore
• A Description of the Northern Peoples
• The Epic of Gilgamesh: One of the earliest surviving works of great literature.
• The Iliad
• Juan Bobo
• Mountain Folklore
• Nautical Folklore
• The Odyssey
• Paul Bunyan
• The Qur'an's Arabic text is in the public domain, but some of the various modern translations aren't.
• Robin Hood
• William Tell

Theatre

• All the works of William Shakespeare
• Swan Lake

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