The Great Gatsby first edition cover art (1925) designed by Francis Cugat.
Thanks to the University of Adelaide, readers in Australia now have access to an amazing free and legal eBook archive of the most popular works by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The books are available to be read online, downloaded as ePub files (suitable for most eReaders), and in a format accessible on Kindles.
Why only Australian readers you ask? This is because up until recently Australia followed the ‘life of the author plus 50 years’ copyright rule. Fitzgerald died in 1940 which meant that his books entered the public domain in Australia in 1991. Many parts of the world, including the United States and the United Kingdom, generally follow a copyright rule of ‘life of the author plus 70 years’. Most people therefore expected Fitzgerald’s back catalogue to enter the public domain in 2011. However, books originally copyrighted in the US between 1923 and 1964 had to have their copyright renewed in their 28th year. This resulted in a copyright extension up to a total of 95 years. Based on this rule, Fitzgerald’s works published before 1923 (This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and The Damned) are now in the public domain in the United States, while The Great Gatsby (published in 1925) will not enter the public domain until 2021.
