Some of the writers who go ‘public domain’ in Europe and the UK in January 2015, under the 70 year rule…
* Max Brand (Wild West stories of the Munsey era)
* Irvin S. Cobb (prolific writer of the Munsey era, some horror)
* Arthur Quiller-Couch (English adventure novelist and poet, some ghost stories)
* John Palmer (mystery writer, biographies of Ben Johnson and Kipling)
* David Wright O’Brien (fantasy & SF writer, nephew of Farnsworth Wright the editor of Weird Tales)
* J. Storer Clouston (some science-fiction novels)
* Robert Nichols (English poet and fantasy writer)
* Margery Williams (Became a conventional children’s writer, but she first wrote the 1913 novel The Thing in the Woods, apparently a “potboiler about a werewolf and its slightly more human brother on the loose in rural Pennsylvania” Lovecraft read it, so a possible influence on “The Dunwich Horror”).
* Rene Daumal (French surrealist)
* Hulbert Footner (mystery and detective writer)
* C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne (popular adventure novels, mostly pirate tales, but also the author of the novel The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis)
* Greville MacDonald (son of the pioneering fantasy writer George MacDonald. Wrote the biography, George MacDonald and his Wife. Other works include The Sanity of William Blake, fairy stories, and the apparently rather fine English fantasy How Jonas Found his Enemy: a Romance of the South Downs, The latter ridiculously expensive and rare, presumably due to his Alice in Wonderland connection.)
“BY this corner of the graveyard the red dawn discovered to Jonas a little pool of clear water, with mosses and parsley-ferns all around it, and so clear and cool-looking that he must drink. The larger part of it was still shadowed by the wall. On knees and hands, he put his lips to it and drank. The refreshment was wonderful. He rose with a sense that he should find the lost sheep yet and bring her home. He looked down once more into the clear pool. It was wider than he had thought—indeed, he had been mistaken; it was a great tarn on the mountain-side! Then he saw that wonderful things were happening on the face of and all round the water. What appeared to be little glow-worms were lying motionless in groups on the mosses in a still-shadowed region by the side of the water. From beneath a low arch in the wall, where the water was slowly flowing away in a river, there came, against stream and wave and wind, a fishing-boat. Its great red sail was spread, and its pennant shone silvery blue in the sun. It came alongside a pier of mossy stones, and cast anchor. From it leapt twelve strong young fishermen, all with bright faces. They took up the little creatures with the glowing lights, and carried them aboard; then back again to other groups, until all were gathered in. For they were all sleeping human forms, close-wrapped in grave-clothes, but with their light still living, as might be seen by anyone who had suffered. When all were safe aboard, the men cast off and the boat disappeared under the arch.” — from How Jonas Found his Enemy: a Romance of the South Downs (1916).
David Haden said:
Note that Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince) does not fall out of copyright, at least in France. As the French courts have yeiled to pressure from his heirs and extended the rights by another 30 years. My guess is that this only applies in France?