{"id":16411,"date":"2024-11-04T13:43:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T13:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=16411"},"modified":"2025-08-29T17:44:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:44:28","slug":"entering-the-public-domain-in-2025-birth-of-a-spitfire-lost-romances-of-the-midlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2024\/11\/04\/entering-the-public-domain-in-2025-birth-of-a-spitfire-lost-romances-of-the-midlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Entering the public-domain in 2025: Birth Of A Spitfire \/ Lost Romances Of The Midlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s popping out of copyright on 1st January 2025? In the UK, authors who died in 1954. Among scintillating titles such as Clog Dancing Made Easy<\/em> and Shell Collector\u2019s Handbook<\/em>, I spotted a few local items. The book Birth Of A Spitfire: The Story of Beaverbrook’s Ministry and its First \u00a310,000,000<\/a><\/em> (1941) was an accessible but detailed hymn to popular national…<\/p>\n

mass production, in which the product, the Spitfire, is “the people’s plane”, owned by the nation who paid for it through personal subscriptions [… the author] frames the narrative of industrial production with the human [angle …] one pilot remarks “we’ve got a plane paid for by girls in shops”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who knew the Spitfire was crowd-funded? Not me. You learn something new every day. Sounds like there’s potential for a graphic novel adaptation of this well-written popular book, I’d suggest. Perhaps mixing in a little of the biography of the Stoke-on-Trent man who made it, and some memories from local lads who flew it in combat. <\/p>\n

I also spotted the historian and artist Louis Mellard (1873-1954), whose 1920s books included the intriguingly titled Lost Romances Of The Midlands<\/em> (I assume this would be mediaeval romances, rather than Mills & Boon ‘mooning and swooning’), Tramp Artist In Derbyshire<\/em>, and others.<\/p>\n

He was born in 1873, and thus would have come of age at the height of the Empire in the early 1890s. Evidently he was a Nottingham man, as a letter in Boy’s Champion Paper<\/em> for March 1887 has him at 24 Curzon Street, Nottingham. A later Notes & Queries<\/em> letter of November 1893 shows he was still living in Nottingham at that time. <\/p>\n

By the mid 1920’s he was at 9 Watcombe Circus, Carrington, Nottinghamshire. At that time he produced Historic Nottingham<\/em> (1925) for the city’s Museum & Art Gallery, plus a pamphlet on Nottingham in the days of Dick Turpin<\/em>. He wrote articles on local history for the Nottingham Evening Post<\/em>. It therefore seems safe to say he was an East Midlands man, of Nottingham. <\/p>\n

Still, he also knew Derbyshire. Both the landscape and the history — as well as Tramp Artist In Derbyshire<\/em> (1923) he also wrote An Historical Survey Of Derbyshire<\/em> (1925) and contributed some illustrations to another county history.<\/p>\n

Along with Lost Romances Of The Midlands<\/em> (1921), I’m guessing there might also be a smidgen of North Staffordshire interest in his Sporting Stories Of The Midlands<\/em> (1926). In the 1890s he had written on dog-racing circles, for Collier’s<\/em> magazine, so evidently he was familiar with the popular sporting scene and its characters circa the 1890s-1920s. Tramp Artist In Derbyshire<\/em> (1923) might also be of interest if it was illustrated with pen drawings and he had also strayed down into the Staffordshire Moorlands? Again, just a guess. Sadly, his books and articles appear to have vanished without trace.<\/p>\n

Almost without a trace. Nottingham Special Collections has one packet of his papers<\/a>, which includes the possibly unpublished essay “Some lost dramas and romances of medieval Nottingham”. Which suggests his Lost Romances Of The Midlands<\/em> (1921) was indeed about mediaeval tales and folk-plays, but I’d guess that it was tilted towards his own East Midlands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s popping out of copyright on 1st January 2025? In the UK, authors who died in 1954. Among scintillating titles such as Clog Dancing Made Easy and Shell Collector\u2019s Handbook, I spotted a few local items. The book Birth Of A Spitfire: The Story of Beaverbrook’s Ministry and its First \u00a310,000,000 (1941) was an accessible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18047,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16411\/revisions\/18047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}