All original components of this project -- that is, work that isn't the intellectual property of other entities and/or persons -- is © by Quimby Melton and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Persons wanting to cite this project, or portions of it, can use the citations that appear on the colophon page.

You can also contact the project editor here, if you wish.

This edition of "Banal Story" is unauthorized, meaning neither the Ernest Hemingway Foundation nor Simon & Schuster have given their permission to "remix" the story. Interested parties can find more information on Hemingway literary permissions on the foundation's website:

The Hemingway Society - http://hemingwaysociety.org

Permission to reproduce the untitled Hannah Höch woodcut has been granted by:

Artists Rights Society (ARS)
536 Broadway, 5th Floor
(at Spring St.)
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-420-9160
Fax: 212-420-9286
http://www.arsny.com/

... as the direct adherent of:

VG Bild-Kunst r.V.
Weberstr.61
53113 Bonn
Germany
Tel.: 0228-91534-0
Fax: 0228-91534-39
http://www.bildkunst.de/

The image is © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, and reproduction, including downloading, of Höch works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Fair-use copies of the "Banal Story" manuscript, and the untitled Hannah Höch woodcut, were provided by:

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Golda Meir Library
2311 East Hartford Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53211
(414) 229-4785
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/

Materials from pages 23-24 of volume 12, issue 1 (Spring/Summer 1926) of The Little Review appear to be either (a) uncopyrighted by Jane Heap and/or Margaret Anderson and/or The Little Review Publishing Company or (b) in the public domain as of 1 January 1955. If any visitor knows this conclusion to be false, s/he is hereby invited to contact this project editor. Otherwise, the editor has concluded that materials from pages 23-24 of volume 12, issue 1 (Spring/Summer 1926) of The Little Review are in the public domain for the following reasons:

Unlike some of the earlier issues, the 12:1 (Spring/Summer 1926) issue of The Little Review contains no copyright notice. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, "The 1909 Copyright Act and the 1976 Copyright Act as originally enacted required a notice of copyright on published works. For most works, a copyright notice consisted of the symbol ©, the word 'Copyright,' or the abbreviation 'Copr.,' together with the name of the owner of copyright and the year of first publication. For example: ' © Joan Crane 1994' or 'Copyright 1994 by Abraham Adams.' ... As originally enacted, the 1976 law prescribed that all visually perceptible published copies of a work ... should bear a proper copyright notice. This applies to such works published before March 1, 1989. ... Prior to March 1, 1989, the requirement for the notice applied equally whether the work was published in the United States or elsewhere by authority of the copyright owner. Compliance with the statutory notice requirements was the responsibility of the copyright owner. Unauthorized publication without the copyright notice, or with a defective notice, does not affect the validity of the copyright in the work. Advance permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office is not required before placing a copyright notice on copies of the work. ... In investigating the copyright status of works first published before January 1, 1978, the most important thing to look for is the notice of copyright. As a general rule under the previous law, copyright protection was lost permanently if the notice was omitted from the first authorized published edition of a work or if it appeared in the wrong form or position. The form and position of the copyright notice for various types of works were specified in the copyright statute. Some courts were liberal in overlooking relatively minor departures from the statutory requirements, but a basic failure to comply with the notice provisions forfeited copyright protection and put the work into the public domain in this country. For works first published before 1978, the complete absence of a copyright notice from a published copy generally indicates that the work is not protected by copyright" ("Information Circular 22: How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work." Copyright.gov/U.S. Copyright Office. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.pdf [accessed May 2, 2011]).

Per the U.S. Copyright Office, "[u]nder the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured either on the date a work was published with notice of copyright or on the date of registration if the work was registered in unpublished form. In either case, copyright endured for a first term of 28 years from the date on which it was secured. During the last (28th) year of the first term, the copyright was eligible for renewal. The copyright law extends the renewal term from 28 to 67 years for copyrights in existence on January 1, 1978. However, for works copyrighted prior to January 1, 1964, the copyright still must have been renewed in the 28th calendar year to receive the 67-year period of added protection. ... If a work was first published or copyrighted between January 1, 1923, and December 31, 1949, ... [and i]f no renewal registration was made, copyright protection expired permanently at the end of the 28th year of the year date it was first secured. ... When a valid renewal registration was made and copyright in the work was in its second term on December 31, 1977, the renewal copyright term was extended under the latest act to 67 years. In these cases, copyright will last for a total of 95 years from the end of the year in which copyright was originally secured" ("Information Circular 22: How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work." Copyright.gov/U.S. Copyright Office. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.pdf [accessed May 2, 2011]). This means that, assuming the issue was copyrighted by Jane Heap and/or Margaret Anderson and/or The Little Review Publishing Company in 1926 (even though it contains no copyright notice), this copyright would have expired on 31 December 1954. Assuming the issue's copyright was renewed (by one of the entities listed or by their rightful agents) before 1 January 1955, the renewed copyright will not expire until December 31, 2021. I have reason, though, to believe the copyright was not renewed in 1954 and thus that copyright protection (at least for the 12:1 [Spring/Summer 1926] issue of The Little Review but likely for the entire magazine since it ceased publication in 1929) has expired permanently. Not only does the U.S. Copyright Office not hold a record of copyright renewal by Heap, Anderson, or The Little Review Publishing Company, the 1953 edition of Hemingway's collected short stories (The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons) contains a statement, likely referring to "Banal Story," affirming the 1926 copyright status of "The Little Review Publishing Company" (iv) while the 1987 Finca Vigía edition of Hemingway's stories (The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, New York: Scribner) and its derivative (The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, New York: Scribner, 1998) do not.

Via e-mail correspondence (which can be found here), Michelle Erica Green, editor of the littlereview.com, made these comments (which I have silently emended for accidental textual errors): "So far as I was able to discern, the copyright on The Little Review itself lapsed long ago -- Jane Heap died in England, leaving The Little Review legal papers to Michael Currer-Briggs, who is no longer living and who in turn had allowed a University of Rhode Island professor indefinite use of Anderson's unpublished manuscripts. But since the contributors to The Little Review were not paid, they retained the rights to their own material published in the magazine; hence Hemingway's stories remain the property of the Hemingway estate. I've never seen The Little Review cited in reprints of Wyndham Lewis or Joyce's Ulysses (though Random House owns the rights to a slightly different manuscript than Pound sent Anderson). ... Since my web site uses only small excerpts from most of the pieces (artwork notwithstanding), I've assumed that my disclaimers and the fair use act protect me."

Permission to reproduce Wayne Kvam's article "Hemingway's 'Banal Story'" (Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual [1974]: 181-91) has been granted by:

Indian Head, Inc.
A Division of Information Handling Services
An Indian Head Company
Microcard Editions
5500 South Valentia Way
Englewood, Colorado 80110

Permission to reproduce George Monteiro's article "The Writer on Vocation: Hemingway's 'Banal Story'" (In Hemingway's Neglected Short Fiction: New Perspectives. Ed. Susan F. Beegel. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989. 141-47) granted by:

Susan Field Beegel/UMI Research Press
An imprint of
University Microfilms Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
http://www.umi.com/

Permission to reproduce Paul Smith's "Banal Story" entry from A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989. xvi-xvii, 104-05, 110-14, and 234-35) granted by:

Paul Smith/G.K. Hall & Co.
70 Lincoln Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02111
http://www.galegroup.com/gkhall/

Finally, permission to reproduce Phillip R. Yannella's article "Notes on the Manuscript, Date, and Sources of Hemingway's 'Banal Story'" (Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual [1974]: 175-79) granted by:

Indian Head, Inc.
A Division of Information Handling Services
An Indian Head Company
Microcard Editions
5500 South Valentia Way
Englewood, Colorado 80110