Members and officers of the International Susan Glaspell Society have no information regarding permissions to reprint or perform Glaspell’s works.
For information or permission from the Glaspell estate to reprint or perform her works, contact the current executors of the estate, Samuel and Benjamin Lourie, who may be reached at samuel.lourie@gmail.com or benjamin.lourie@colorado.edu
GENERAL INFORMATION REGARDING U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW
Once a work has entered the public domain, it may be reprinted without permission. All works published before January 1, 1923, regardless of where they were published, are now in the public domain.
The 1923 benchmark arises from a change of law in 1998. Until then, the maximum term of copyright protection was 75 years – an original term of 28 years which could be renewed for an additional 47 years. In 1998, the renewal term was extended to 67 years, allowing a maximum term of 95 years, but the change in law did not affect works with copyrights that had already expired, which included all works published prior to 1923.
If a work was published from 1923 through 1963 but the copyright was not renewed, the work is now in the public domain. In order to determine whether or not a copyright was renewed, look for notice of renewal in a new edition of the work; contact the author, estate or last publisher of the work; or search the copyright records, which are stored at the Library of Congress. The library staff will conduct the search for a fee. After 1978, the copyright records are accessible online, and one of the sites linked below provides helpful information on how to conduct an online search.
Works published in 1923 through 1963 with copyrights that were properly renewed, and all copyrighted works published from 1964 through 1977 are protected for 95 years from the date of initial publication. Under these rules, none of these works will enter the public domain until the end of 2018. Then, copyrights will expire on all works published in 1923 (1923 + 95 = 2018), and those works will enter the public domain. Each year after 2018 will bring a new benchmark for public domain status, with the benchmark computed by subtracting 95 years.
Works created or published after 1977 are generally protected for 70 years after the death of the author, although the sites below should be consulted for specific rules.
Also remember that if a book contains material that was previously published in a different form, that material could be protected under its own copyright, with a different term than applies to the book itself. For helpful charts summarizing these rules, and for more information on works published outside the U.S., see:
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
http://www.sunsteinlaw.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/flowchart.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To
For information on searching the copyright records for renewals, see:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html
For online records, see The Library of Congress: