Fitzgerald

in 2000 (19 years ago now!), LOA published their first volume of the works of Scott Fitzgerald. Since then, nothing. His name doesn't even show up in this forum when people speculate on works in progress. I don't want to start an argument about what authors do or do not belong in the LOA canon, but I don't see how any series purporting to publish the best American writing can ignore Fitzgerald. His output, while significant, was not that large, and it would not take very many more volumes to include his major work. Does anyone know why the Fitzgerald collection stopped after just the single volume we have to date? I realize that his work is readily available in many formats, but that is not the same as being included in the LOA

There may be a copyright issue. His novels published in the earlier volume were all published prior to 1923. Gatsby and others weren’t published until later and aren’t yet in the public domain.

Twenty years ago, many pre-1923 works were released from copyright, and that's why LOA was able to publish these earlier works in 2000. At that time, copyright was extended another 20 years (from 75 years after publication to 95 years). In 2019, works published in 1923 are released from copyright, and this will continue year by year -- in 2020, works published in 1924 will be released, followed by 1925 in 2021, 1926 in 2022, and so forth. Based on this, I would hope we will soon be seeing more Fitzgerald in LOA (The Great Gatsby was published in 1925), although we may have to wait a while for enough works to fill a volume to be released into the public domain.

>1 Mareino: That is correct. Works by American authors just started entering the public domain again Jan. 1 this year for the first time in 20 years thanks to a law sponsored by Sony Bono to assure that Disney would keep control over Mickey Mouse. Here is a write-up. Copyright is based on date of publication, not composition, which is why LOA hasn't been able to publish a volume of Emily Dickenson's works yet either. The copyright owners refused to allow them to do so or were unreasonable in their demands for compensation.

Here is one of several articles on the copyright expiration, delayed for 20 years, but will be opening up starting this year and next.

Fan Fiction, Small Presses, large presses even. There may be resurgence in fine (and not so fine) editions of Fitzgerald and other early 20th century authors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/books/copyright-extension-literature-public-d...

Thanks to everyone who responded regarding the copyright issues that are apparently the reason for the delay in adding more Fitzgerald. I was aware that copyright was involved but it seemed strange to me that LOA has been able to publish many writers who were much more recent than Fitzgerald. Not sure why the holders of the Fitzgerald copyright would be objecting to LOA publication since, as we all have noted, the books are readily available from various publishers now. Of course, I am not privy to the payment arrangements that LOA has regarding its publications.
It is probably useless to speculate on the reasoning - estate issues are often contentious and not always ruled by rational thinking.
I'm up in years so here's hoping that it is resolved in the near future (?)

Yeah, I don't really know either. If I am not mistaken, everything published in the first Fitzgerald volume was in the public domain when the volume was published. I have basically always assumed that some of the big names that are missing from the LOA ranks are simply due to issues of payment. I think that has been the issue with Hemingway too, and many other authors who probably belong in the LOA series. There was a big Fitzgerald omnibus that I used to see in Half Price Books a while back, and I wondered how they had gotten the rights to publish a complete edition of Fitzgerald, and I think someone explained to me that the publisher was based in Great Britain or somewhere in Europe, and so the copyright laws were different there. I could be wrong about some or all of that, but that was just the impression I had about it. I took it to mean that that particular book was probably only officially available for new purchase outside the United States.

You've all correctly identified the culprit here, but I should clarify that more often than not it's the original publisher, rather than the estate (or author), that prevents us from issuing an edition. Before the 1980s (and powerhouse agents), authors often assigned to the publisher all rights to a work as long as the publisher kept it "in print." And a handful of publishers in particular regard LOA volumes as competing products. We have a hard time convincing them that's really never been the case; in fact, LOA editions of many authors (Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, Shirley Jackson) have have had the opposite effect of increasing sales overall.

The multiple editions of certain works and authors from other publishers (e.g., of "Great Gatsby") often come with riders that make them, in the eyes of the original publisher, non-competitive. To wit: They are only allowed to be sold through the mail and not in bookstores, the edition is available for a limited time or for just one printing, the price for the single work is much higher (which makes the royalty as lucrative as their own paperback), etc. Somebody recently wrote me to ask why Folio Society could get the rights to Gatsby and we couldn't and I pointed out that the 184-page volume was mail-order only, had a price of $54, and was already sold out.

Then there are European editions, since anyone who died 70 years ago or more is in the public domain there.

As the entry of certain works into the public domain in the U.S. becomes imminent, we're seeing some of the resistance crumble; that's how we reached a deal for the first Hemingway volume, and we're hoping the same approach works for several other authors. True: It gives us only a few years' head start for volumes that should have been in the LOA all along, but we'll take it.

--David

>8 DCloyceSmith:

Fascinating account, especially the bit about the headwind when attempting to persuade publishers that an LOA edition might actually prove to be good marketing for their own sales!

Nice summary of the copyright issues and LOA plans in recent LOA news release

https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1478-long-awaited-expiration-of-copyright-law...

>10 Mareino:

To quote from the article:

In the coming months we expect to make available carefully prepared, authoritative editions of selected titles entering the public domain in eBook editions and/or paperback reprints. Among the new and forthcoming titles are eBooks of Edith Wharton’s A Son at the Front, Sherwood Anderson’s Many Marriages, and The Able McLaughlins, a 1923 debut novel by Margaret Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize—and more are on the way.

The new Fitzgerald LOA with Gatsby and All The Sad Young Men arrived yesterday. There are also a fair number of short stories that I haven't read before, as well as some non-fiction pieces (most of which I think I have). It's a beautifully-done volume and I look forward to spending a lot of time with it in the next few weeks. A couple of things that puzzle me--why wasn't Fitzgerald's brief introduction to the 1934 Modern Library edition of Gatsby included in the notes or added as an appendix? Is it being held back for a future collection of Fitzgerald's 1930s writings? (Iirc in past LOA volumes I've seen intros that authors wrote for subsequent editions included in notes or appendices--one recent example is Kurt Vonnegut's Novels 1963-1973, which included two special introductions that Vonnegut wrote for new editions of Slaughterhouse Five that came well after the 1973 end date of the volume in question.) I'm also still mystified by the omission of Fitzgerald's 1923 play The Vegetable--was it really that awful, or is it being held back for a future volume as well? I realize that LOA volumes don't necessarily aim for completism, which is often a good thing (I surely hope any future 1930s Fitzgerald volumes will have no room for the terrible Philippe stories, for instance) and The Vegetable is readily available in other formats.

Didn't notice this thread back when: regarding DCLOYCESMITH'S earlier note, and how publishers like Folio only sold via the mails: I bought THE COLLECTED WORKS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (Wordsworth Editions) -- nowhere NEAR as fine as edition as Folio, but still quite good, hardcover and solid binding. I bought in one of the brick & mortar stores in Australia -- Robinson's. Can't recall the cost, but trust me: ALL books here in "oz" are seriously over-priced (as are things like clothes, housing and, to a somewhat lesser extent, food).
So either someone is selling in ways they shouldn't be (which wouldn't surprise me; there's a serious "small criminal" -- where's my taste? -- mindset to the society as a whole), or they found a loophole. This edition is 2013 (although it was supposed to have been first printed in 2008, according to some online info). The publisher is located in England, and my edition was printed there (Australia _does_ do a lot of its own printing, binding, etc).

Contents:
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
THE BEAUTIFUL & THE DAMNED
THE GREAT GATSBY
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
THE LAST TYCOON
and
SELECTED SHORT STORIES:
Winter Dreams
Gretchen's Forty Winks
Absolution
The Sensible Thing
Love in the Night
A Short Trip Home
Magnetism
A Night at the Fair
Basil: The Freshest Boy
Forging Ahead
The Rough Crossing
At Your Age
Two Wrongs
A Nice Quiet Place
Josephine: A Woman With a Past
The Bridal Party
A Freeze-Out
Family in the Wind
What a Handsome Pair!
Afternoon of an Author
Financing Finnegan
Design in Plaster
A Patriotic Short
Three Hours Between Planes

>13 Truett: Your British/Australian edition of Fitzgerald is probably legal (assuming it was published in 2013 and not in 2008).

In most Commonwealth countries and elsewhere, copyright expires 70 years after the author's death. Thus, ALL of Fitzgerald's works entered the public domain in 2011 in many countries outside the U.S.

In the U.S. copyright expires 95 years after the publication of the work.

The copyright law does not work in the other direction, however. Once a work enters the public domain in the author's home country, it usually enters the public domain in England. So, even though Hemingway died in 1961, protecting his oeuvre until 2032 in England, The Sun Also Rises entered the public domain this year in the U.S., and thus in most of the rest of the world as well.

--David

>14 DCloyceSmith:
Hey, David,

Belated thanks for more insight into the ways and workings of copyright laws, in the USA, and internationally.