Image: Wallace Stevens, 1948

Description: Photo portrait of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) used for the first-edition cover of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954).
Title: Wallace Stevens, 1948
Credit: Scan of the portrait sourced from the article "Wallace Stevens Documentary At Twain House" (June 17, 2016) at the Hartford Courant (direct link to jpg). Cropped from the original to match what is seen on the cover of Collected Poems. Lightly retouched by uploader to adjust exposure and to remove smudges, scratches, etc. The upload history includes the portrait as it appears on Collected Poems (to demonstrate that the crop matches the book cover), the unretouched but cropped version of the high-res photo, and the retouched version.
Author: Photograph by Sylvia Salmi. For countries that base the length of a copyright term on the date of the author's death and do not use the rule of the shorter term: According to lakechapalaartists.com, Sylvia Salmi died in 1977. This means that, for example, in countries without the rule of the shorter term and a copyright term of 50 p.m.a. (including Canada), the photo will not be in the public domain until January 1, 2028 (the beginning of the 51st year after 1977).
Permission: No permission is required. First, the photo is a mechanical scan/photocopy of the original cover and does not qualify for independent copyright protection. Second, the portrait was first published prior to 1978 without a valid copyright notice. Opus Posthumous was first published in 1957; the hardcover book itself carried a copyright notice, so its contents remain copyrighted. However, the first-edition dust jacket did not carry a separate copyright notice. According to The Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices: Chapter 2200, § 2207.1(C) at p. 15: "A notice of copyright on the dust jacket of a book is not an acceptable notice for the book, because the dust jacket is not permanently attached to the book. Likewise, a notice appearing in a book is not an acceptable notice for the dust jacket or any material appearing on that dust jacket, even if the book refers to the jacket or material appearing on the jacket." Keep in mind that the pre-1989 requirements for copyright notice were highly formalistic and, other than a few enumerated exceptions, required these three elements: "The symbol © or the word 'Copyright' or the abbreviation 'Copr.' or an acceptable variant such as "(c)"; "The year of first publication for the work"; and "The name of the copyright owner, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner." If just one of these elements is omitted, the work is deemed to have been published without notice and is not eligible for copyright protection. None of these elements—the name "Sylvia Salmi", the year of publication, a copyright symbol (or any acceptable variant)—appear anywhere on the dust jacket. The identifications of the publisher and author do not meet these requirements. The full dust jacket can be seen at the Internet Archive (registration required to see the full ebook, and there may be a waitlist for free access, but the front cover, front flap, and back cover can be seen in preview). A cropped portion of Salmi's photograph was used for the cover of Collected Poems. This image has been cropped from a high-resolution scan of the original uncropped photo so that it matches the dimensions of the Collected Poems cover. The most conspicuous difference is that the original uncropped portrait shows more of Stevens's crossed arms. It is unclear whether the "uncropped" portions from the original photo are under copyright protection or not; without further information they should be presumed to be copyrighted. Nevertheless, the original portrait is considered to have been published to at least the same extent that it was "disclosed" by its publication as part of the dust jacket (i.e., the cropped portion). See Shoptalk, Ltd. v. Concorde-New Horizons Corp., 168 F.3d 586, 591 (2d Cir. 1999): "[W]hen the author consents to the inclusion of [her] work in a derivative work, the publication of the derivative work, to the extent . . . it discloses the original work, also constitutes publication of [the] underlying work." Therefore, the dust jacket's publication without a copyright notice rendered at least the cropped portion of the portrait ineligible for copyright and in the public domain.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No