PROVENANCE.md

PROVENANCE

Edition-level sourcing and copyright reasoning for every text in data/raw/. All determinations are for US public domain status; the operative rule is that works published before January 1, 1930 are PD in the US as of 2026.

In the corpus

file	work	edition used	PD basis
pepys_complete.txt	Samuel Pepys, Diary (written 1660–69)	Wheatley transcription, via Project Gutenberg #4200	Published 1893–99; author d. 1703
vangogh_letters.txt	Vincent van Gogh, letters	The Letters of a Post-Impressionist, trans. Anthony Ludovici, 1912 — PG #40393	Translation published 1912. NB: the letters themselves are PD, but most English translations are NOT (the standard 1958 edition is under copyright). Only pre-1930 translations qualify.
mansfield_journal_1927.txt	Katherine Mansfield, Journal	Knopf, New York, 1927 (file is the 1928 second printing of the 1927 edition), Archive.org OCR	Published Sept 1927. Not the 1954 "definitive edition," which restored suppressed passages and carries separate copyright — do not substitute it. Murry's editorial bracket insertions are stripped in cleaning, partly as conservatism about editorial-apparatus copyright.
maclane_story.txt	Mary MacLane, The Story of Mary MacLane	1902, PG #43696	Published 1902
maclane_i.txt	Mary MacLane, I, Mary MacLane	1917, PG #43556	Published 1917

Integrity: Gutenberg files were downloaded twice independently (gutenberg.org ebook endpoint / aleph.pglaf.org mirror) during the build; checksums matched.

Considered and declined — and why

These were discussed for the fourth ghost and rejected on rights grounds. Recorded so the reasoning survives:

• Anne Frank — diary written 1942–44 but copyright runs from publication (1947+); Dutch original under copyright into the 2030s, English translations longer. A personally owned PDF copy confers no training rights (license to read ≠ license to reproduce). Declined even though a copy was available.
• Anaïs Nin — diaries published 1966+; d. 1977; estate active. Locked for decades.
• Sylvia Plath — journals published 1982. Locked.
• Alice James — perfect sensibility for this project; diary published
  1934. Misses the PD line by four years; revisit in 2030.
• Anne Lister — raw diaries (d. 1840) are PD, but the famous decoded texts are 1980s editions. Usable in principle via 1887–92 Halifax Guardian excerpts + open archive transcriptions; deferred for sourcing effort, not rights.

House rules for adding ghosts

1. Verify the edition, not just the author. Publication date < 1930.
2. Translations: the translation's own publication date governs.
3. Strip modern editorial apparatus during cleaning.
4. Record the source URL, edition, and reasoning in this file.
5. When in doubt, the ghost stays buried.