2009/12/21 geni geniice@gmail.com:
January 1st is Public Domain Day. That is the day that all the works of everyone who died in 1939 enter the public domain. No I'm not the only one to note this creative commons apparently picks up on it:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/11920
The most interesting name I'm aware of this year is Howard Carter who created a lot of paintings and drawings of Egyptian archaeological artifacts. I'm trying to put together more names but I was wounder if it was something a press release could be built around?
Sigmund Freud and W. B. Yeats are the two particularly influential authors this year, I believe - neither UK, but both life+70 jurisdictions.
Arthur Rackham, Havelock Ellis and Ford Madox Ford are both interesting, though neither is particularly well-known now.