Following my tradition of posting on or about Public Domain Day, here is a brief report about this year's publishing activity at the Monadnock Valley Press, my website for writings in the public domain.
As expected, 2025 was a light year. The yield was limited to a few essays by Montaigne, George Santayana, and Randolph Bourne; the Histories of Herodotus; the Rhetoric of Aristotle; several dialogues by Xenophon; a lecture by A.E. Housman; a speech by Abraham Lincoln; one letter each by Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain; one play each by Sophocles and Henrik Ibsen; an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Plutarch's Life of Alexander; and a fair number of poems.
On the plus side, since March we've been publishing the Classic Poems newsletter on Substack, whose motto is "A Poem a Day Keeps the Doldrums Away!"
In general the publication roadmap is backing up and it's not clear when I'll have the time and inclination to make faster progress. Not that anyone is pushing me to publish things in a hurry, mind you. That's the beauty of a long-term side project...
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