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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Alessandro Bottero on February 27, 2011, 11:42:42 AM

Title: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: Alessandro Bottero on February 27, 2011, 11:42:42 AM

hello everyone.
i'm here with another question, regarding PD status of something.
i was thinking about the Frederic Wertham's book "seduction of the innocent". as far i know there is no italian translation of this book, and i've a friend of mine, a publisher, wich could be interested in this project.
what i would like to do is....how could i discover if Wertham book is or not PD?

hope my question is clear

thank you

Title: Re: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: Roygbiv666 on February 27, 2011, 05:44:37 PM

I don't know the copyright status, but I do have a reprint of the book. It says "Copyright 1953, 1954, by Frederic Wertham. All rights reserved." New material copyright 2004 by James E. Reibman, all rights reserved"

Title: Re: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: JVJ (RIP) on February 27, 2011, 08:33:41 PM

It's not PD:
http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/search/simple/process?query=seduction+of+the+innocent (http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/search/simple/process?query=seduction+of+the+innocent)

Peace, Jim (|:{>

Title: Re: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: Alessandro Bottero on February 28, 2011, 05:08:38 AM

thanks a lot

Title: Re: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: DocWertham on March 25, 2011, 02:58:10 PM

Back in the 50's, Dr. Wertham tried to interest other publishers in the book.  When I was at the Library of Congress to see Wertham's files, I found letters indicating that he had discussions about both a Spanish and a Portugese version of the book.  To my knowledge, neither of those ended up getting published. 

According to a letter in Wertham's files, something Wertham wrote (I think it was an article and not the full text of SOTI) got translated into German without Wertham's permission.  Since the article was published in East Germany, Wertham's agent indicated that he didn't have any options to remedy the situation.

I have some information regarding the current copyright holder for Seduction of the Innocent.  If the publisher you know might still be interested in an Italian translation, have him/her contact me here or through the SOTI website (SeductionOfTheInnocent.org).

Title: Re: question regarding Frederic Wertham Seduction of Innocent
Post by: Yoc on March 27, 2011, 09:49:17 PM

There is a great entry on Wertham inside a series on the fantastic typographer behind the best DC logos - IRA SCHNAPP!

Go here to see the Wertham connection entry -
http://tinyurl.com/4mt6zjq

The entire series is great reading and highly recommended!
-Yoc