As far as I've been able to determine, _Right Ho, Jeeves_
is *not* in the public domain, and this etext and #10554
(the plain text version of this book) should be withdrawn
(unless Gutenberg has permission from Wodehouse's estate).
The problem seems to stem from some recent reprints (such
as from Hutchinson) that state that the story was first published
in Great Britain by Herbert Jenkins Ltd in 1922, and give
a copyright date of 1922. I'm guessing this was the information
Gutenberg used to clear this book, since 1922 copyrights have
expired in the US.
However, the statements in the reprints are inaccurate.
According to McIlvaine et al's _P. G. Wodehouse: A Comprehensive
Bibliography and Checklist_, Herbert Jenkins was indeed the first
publisher of the story in book form, but it was not published
until 1934. Moreover, the story's first publication was actually
as a magazine serial, running in the Saturday Evening Post from
Dec. 23, 1933 to Jan. 27, 1934.
(I've also found no edition predating 1933 either in WorldCat, OCLC's
union catalog of libraries in North America and elsewhere, or in
COPAC, the British union catalog. There are a few editions marked
"1922" in WorldCat, but on closer inspection they all turn out to be
recent reprints.)
Copyrights to the Saturday Evening Post were routinely renewed.
The renewals for the issues in which the installments of "Right-Ho
Jeeves" first appeared can be found on these scanned Catalog of
Copyright Entries pages:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015085477332;view=1up;seq=183
and
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015085477332;view=1up;seq=414
(I am not a lawyer, but I've been assuming, and I think Project Gutenberg
assumes as well, that renewal of a periodical issue's copyright also renews
the copyright of content that first appears there.)
Wikisource has recently withdrawn its copy of _Right-Ho, Jeeves_ due to
copyright concerns, which is what tipped me off to the potential problem.
I recommend that Project Gutenberg review the status of this work as well.
John Mark Ockerbloom
On 08/13/2008 04:38 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:
Audio: Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 26303
[Audio reading by Mark Nelson ]
[Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/3/0/26303 ]
[Files: 26303.txt; 26303-mp3.mp3; 26303-ogg.ogg; 26303-m4b.m4b;
26303-spx.spx ]
Thanks to Mark Nelson
and Librivox (www.librivox.org)
Josh
