Work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist
This article is about lost documents. For other types of lost works, seeLost artworks andLost media.
Alost literary work (referred throughout this article just as a lost work) is a document,literary work, or piece of multimedia, produced of which no surviving copies are known to exist, meaning it can be known only through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from theclassical world, although it is increasingly used in relation to modern works. A work may be lost to history through the destruction of an original manuscript and all later copies.
Works—or, commonly, small fragments of works—have survived by being found byarchaeologists during investigations, or accidentally by anybody, such as, for example, theNag Hammadi library scrolls. Works also survived when they were reused asbookbinding materials, quoted or included in other works, or aspalimpsests, where an original document is imperfectly erased so the substrate on which it was written can be reused. The discovery, in 1822, ofCicero'sDe re publica was one of the first major recoveries of a lost ancient text from a palimpsest. Another famous example is the discovery of theArchimedes Palimpsest, which was used to make a prayer book almost 300 years after the original work was written. A work may be recovered in a library, as a lost or mislabeledcodex, or as a part of another book or codex.
Well known but not recovered works are described bycompilations that did survive, such as theNaturalis Historia ofPliny the Elder or theDe architectura ofVitruvius. Sometimes authors will destroy their own works. On other occasions, authors instruct others to destroy their work after their deaths. Such instructions are not always followed:Virgil'sAeneid was saved byAugustus, andKafka's novels byMax Brod. Handwritten copies ofmanuscripts existed in limited numbers before the era of printing. The destruction ofancient libraries, whether by intent, chance or neglect, resulted in the loss of numerous works. Works to which no subsequent reference is preserved remain unknown.
Deliberate destruction of works may be termedliterary crime orliterary vandalism (seebook burning).
Through statistical analysis, it is estimated that the number of lostIncunable editions is at least 20,000.[1]
TheOdyssey mentions the blind singerDemodocus performing a poem recounting the otherwise unknown "Quarrel ofOdysseus andAchilles", which might have been an actual work that did not survive.[6]
Phoenician History, a Greek translation of the originalPhoenician book attributed toSanchuniathon. Considerable fragments have been preserved, chiefly by Eusebius in thePraeparatio evangelica (i.9; iv.16).
De Viris Illustribus (On Famous Men – in the field of literature), to which belongs:De Illustribus Grammaticis (Lives Of The Grammarians),De Claris Rhetoribus (Lives Of The Rhetoricians), andLives Of The Poets. Some fragments exist.
Lives of Famous Whores
Royal Biographies
Roma (On Rome), in four parts:Roman Manners & Customs,The Roman Year,The Roman Festivals, andRoman Dress.
Lost plays ofAeschylus. He is believed to have written some 90 plays, of which six survive. A seventh play is attributed to him. Fragments of his playAchilleis were said to have been discovered in the wrappings of amummy in the 1990s.[22]
Lost poems ofAlcaeus of Mytilene. Of a reported ten scrolls, there exist only quotes and numerous fragments.
Lost choral poems ofAlcman. Of six books of choral lyrics that were known (ca. 50–60 hymns), only fragmentary quotations in other Greek authors were known until the discovery of a fragment in 1855, containing approximately 100 verses. In the 1960s, many more fragments were discovered and published from a dig atOxyrhynchus.
Lost poems ofAnacreon. Of the five books of lyrical pieces mentioned in theSuda and byAthenaeus, only mere fragments collected from the citations of later writers now exist.
Lost works ofAnaximander. There are a few extant fragments of his works.
Lost works ofApuleius in many genres, including a novel,Hermagoras, as well as poetry, dialogues, hymns, and technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic.
Lost plays ofAristarchus of Tegea. Of 70 pieces, only the titles of three of his plays, with a single line of the text, have survived.
Lost plays ofAristophanes. He wrote 40 plays, 11 of which survive.
Lost works ofAristotle. It is believed that we have about one third of his original works.[24]
Lost work ofAristoxenus. He is said to have written 453 works, dealing with philosophy, ethics and music. His only extant work isElements of Harmony.
Lost works ofCallimachus. Of about 800 works, in verse and prose; only six hymns, 64 epigrams and some fragments survive; a considerable fragment of the epicHecale, was discovered in the Rainer papyri.
Lost works ofChrysippus. Of over 700 written works, none survive, except a few fragments embedded in the works of later authors.
Lost works ofCicero. Of his books, six on rhetoric have survived, and parts of seven on philosophy. Books 1–3 of his workDe re publica have survived mostly intact, as well as a substantial part of book 6. A dialogue on philosophy calledHortensius, which was highly influential onAugustine of Hippo, is lost. Part ofDe Natura Deorum is lost.
Lost works ofCleopatra including books on medicine, charms, and cosmetics (according to the historianAl-Masudi).
Lost works ofClitomachus. According toDiogenes Laërtius, he wrote some 400 books, of which none are extant today, although a few titles are known.
Lost plays ofCratinus. Only fragments of his works have been preserved.
Lost works ofDemocritus. He wrote extensively on natural philosophy and ethics, of which little remains.
Lost works ofDiogenes of Sinope. He is reported to have written several books, none of which has survived to the present date. Whether or not these books were actually his writings or attributions are in dispute.
Lost works ofDiphilus. He is said to have written 100 comedies, the titles of 50 of which are preserved.
Lost works ofEnnius. Only fragments of his works survive.
Lost works ofEmpedocles. Little of what he wrote survives today.
Lost plays ofEpicharmus of Kos. He wrote between 35 and 52 comedies, many of which have been lost or exist only in fragments.
Lost plays ofEuripides. He is believed to have written over 90 plays, 18 of which have survived. Fragments, some substantial, of most other plays also survive.
Lost plays ofEupolis. Of the 17 plays attributed to him, only fragments remain.
Lost works ofHeraclitus. His writings only survive in fragments quoted by other authors.
Lost works ofHippasus. Few of his original works now survive.
Lost works ofHippias. He is credited with an excellent work on Homer, collections of Greek and foreign literature, and archaeological treatises, but nothing remains except the barest notes.
Lost orations ofHyperides. Some 79 speeches were transmitted in his name in antiquity. A codex of his speeches was seen at Buda in 1525 in the library of KingMatthias Corvinus of Hungary, but was destroyed by the Turks in 1526. In 2002, Natalie Tchernetska ofTrinity College, Cambridge discovered and identified fragments of two speeches of Hyperides that have been considered lost,Against Timandros andAgainst Diondas. Six other orations survive in whole or part.
Lost poems ofIbycus. According to theSuda, he wrote seven books of lyrics.
Lost plays ofIon of Chios. Variously stated to have written 12 to 40 tragedies during his lifetime with only the titles and fragments of 11 of these plays survive.[26]
Lost works ofJuba II. He wrote a number of books in Greek and Latin on history, natural history, geography, grammar, painting and theatre. Only fragments of his work survive.
Lost works ofLeucippus. No writings exist which we can attribute to him.
Lost works ofLucius Varius Rufus. The author of the poemDe morte and the tragedyThyestes praised by his contemporaries as being on a par with the best Greek poets. Only fragments survive.
Lost works ofMelissus of Samos. Only fragments preserved in other writers' works exist.
Lost plays ofMenander. He wrote over a hundred comedies of which one survives. Fragments of a number of his plays survive.
Lost poems ofPhanocles. He wrote some poems about homosexual relationships among heroes of the mythical tradition of which only one survives, along with a few short fragments.
Lost works ofPhilemon. Of his 97 works, 57 are known to us only as titles and fragments.
Lost poetry ofPindar. Of his varied books of poetry, only his victory odes survive in complete form. The rest are known only by quotations in other works or papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt.
Lost plays ofPlautus. He wrote approximately 130 plays, of which 21 survive.
There existsa list of more than 60 lost works in many genres by the philosopherPorphyry, includingAgainst the Christians (of which only fragments survive).
Lost works ofPosidonius. All of his works are now lost. Some fragments exist, as well as titles and subjects of many of his books.[27]
Lost works ofProclus. A number of his commentaries onPlato are lost.
Lost works ofPyrrhus. He wroteMemoirs and several books on the art of war, all now lost. According to Plutarch, Hannibal was influenced by them and they received praise from Cicero.
Lost works ofPythagoras. No texts by him survived.
Lost works of Pythangelus. Cited as a tragic poet in Aristophanes playThe Frogs though little is known about his existence and none of his work survives.[28]
Lost plays ofRhinthon. Of 38 plays, only a few titles and lines have been preserved.
Lost poems ofSappho. Only a few full poems and fragments of others survive. It has been hypothesized that poems61 and62 ofCatullus were inspired by lost works of Sappho.
Lost poems ofSimonides of Ceos. Of his poetry we possess two or three short elegies, several epigrams and about 90 fragments of lyric poetry.
Lost plays ofSophocles. Of 123 plays, seven survive, with fragments of others.
Lost poems ofSulpicia, who wrote erotic poems of conjugal bliss and was herself the subject of two poems byMartial, who wrote (10.35) that "All girls who desire to please one man should read Sulpicia. All husbands who desire to please one wife should read Sulpicia."
Lost poems ofStesichorus. Of several long works, significant fragments survive.
Lost works ofTheodectes. Of his 50 tragedies, we have the names of about 13 and a few unimportant fragments. His treatise on the art of rhetoric and his speeches are lost.
Lost works ofTheophrastus. Of his 227 books, only a handful survive, includingOn Plants andOn Stones, butOn Mining is lost. Fragments of others survive.
Lost works ofTimon. None of his works survive except where he is quoted by others, mainlySextus Empiricus.
Lost works ofTiro. A biography ofCicero in at least four books is referenced byAsconius Pedianus in his commentaries on Cicero's speeches.[29]
Lost plays ofXenocles. Referenced various times in the works ofAristophanes as an inferior poet and had won first place in the Dionysia in 415 BC though none of his works survive.[12]
Lost works ofXenophanes. Fragments of his poetry survive only as quotations by later Greek writers.
Lost works ofZeno of Elea. None of his works survive intact.
Lost works ofZeno of Citium. None of his writings have survived except as fragmentary quotations preserved by later writers.
MostMaya codices were burned by Spanish priests in the sixteenth century.
ManyIncaQuipus (an ancient device used for record keeping and communication[30]) were burned by Spanish priests in 1583 on the orders of theThird Council of Lima.[31] Only 751 quipus are known to have survived to the present.
Book of Bai Ze (simplified Chinese 白泽图;pinyin: Bái Zé Tú). A guide to the forms and habits of all 11,520 types of supernatural creatures in the world, and how to overcome their hauntings and attacks, as dictated by the mythical creature,Bai Ze, to theYellow Emperor in the 26th century BCE.
Works of the 5th century BCE philosopherYang Zhu burned on the orders of the emperorShi Huangdi, the founder of theQin dynasty.
Jaya andBharata, early versions of the Hindu epicMahabharata
Bārhaspatya-sūtras, the foundational text of theCārvāka school of philosophy. The text probably dates from the final centuries BC, with only fragmentary quotations of it surviving.
Valayapathi, Tamil epic poem, only fragments survive.
Kundalakesi, Tamil epic poem, only fragments survive.
Brihatkatha, a collection of stories inPaishachi composed by Gunadhya between the 1st c. BC and the 3rd c. AD. Parts of it were adapted into Sanskrit and some vernaculars (see the article).
TheBook of Thoth, a legendary manuscript alluded to in Egyptian literature believed to contain the secrets to comprehend the power of the gods and speech of animals.[32]
Additionally, thousands of other pieces are attributed to the deityThoth.Seleuces noted that the number of his writings was 20,000 whileManetho held it was 36,525.[33]
Khwātay-Nāmag (Book of Lords) : A chronological history of Iranian kings from the mythical era to the end of Sasanian period. This book was an important reference for post-Sasanian and Islamic historians such asIbn al-Muqaffa' as well asFerdowsi in his epic workShahnameh.
Ewen-Nāmag: Multi-volume book on Iranian ceremonies, entertainment, warfare, politics, precepts, principles and examples in the Sasanian era.
Zij-i Shahryār: An important work of astronomy.
Karirak ud Damanak: A version translated into Pahlavi of the Indian work of fictionPancatantra.
Hazār Afsān orThousand Tales: A Pahlavi compilation of Iranian and Indian tales. This work was translated to Arabic in the Islamic era and became known asOne Thousand and One Nights.
Mazdak-Nāmag: Biography of Mazdak, the Zoroastrian reformer and the primate ofMazdakism movement.
Kārvand: A book of rhetoric.
Jāvidan Khrad (Immortal wisdom): Quotations of the mythical Iranian king and sageHushang.
The Middle-Persian literature had a remarkable diversity based on historical accounts. Only a poor part of mostly religious texts survived by Zoroastrian minorities in Persia and India.
Hegesippus'sHypomnemata (Memoirs) in five books, and a history of the Christian church.
TheGospel of the Lord compiled byMarcion of Sinope to support his interpretation of Christianity. Marcion's writings were suppressed but a portion of them have been recreated from the works that were used to denounce them.
Various works ofTertullian. Some fifteen works in Latin or Greek are lost, some as recently as the 9th century (De Paradiso,De superstitione saeculi,De carne et anima were all extant in the now damagedCodex Agobardinus in 814 AD).
Sozomen's history of the Christian church, from the Ascension of Jesus to the defeat of Licinius in 323, in twelve books.
Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, a historical work of twelve volumes of which only brief fragments survive, a few passages being quoted in chapters eight and nine of the second book ofGregory of Tours'sDecem libri historiarum (Ten Books of Histories)
Beowulf: since a fire in 1731 parts of the manuscript have been lost, most notably a large section of the fight between Beowulf and the dragon towards the end of the poem. (c. 1000)[39]
The Quaternuli byDavid of Dinant. Which were condemned by a provincial council headed byPeter of Corbeil in 1210, who ordered for them to be burned for expressing pantheist beliefs. David may have also published another work, entitled De Tomis, seu Divisionibus. Though it is likely this may be another title for the Quaternuli.
Sargudhasht-i Bābā Sayyidinā (Persian:سرگذشت بابا سیدنا), Hasan Sabbah's biography. Juvayni "saved" it before burning the library, and used it as a source in hisTarikh-i Jahangushay, but he claimed that he burned it after reading it.[47]
Carostavnik orRodoslov. Old Serbian biography enters a new—historiographic or even chronographic—phase with the appearance of the so-calledVita, better yet "Lives of Serbian Kings and Archbishops" byDanilo II, Serbian Archbishop, formerly Abbot of theHilandar Monastery, and his successors, most of whom remained anonymous.
Vrhobreznica Chronicle originates in 1371 but the work is not transcribed until two and half centuries later by a writer named Gavrilo, a hermit, who collected earlier annals in his redaction composed in 1650 at the Vrhobreznica monastery. Part of a manuscript archived as Prague Museum #29 (together with Vrhobreznica Genealogy).
Koporin Chronicle– a 1371 chronicle transcribed in 1453 by Damjan, a deacon, who also wrote the annals on the order of Archbishop of Zeta, Josif, at the Koporin monastery.
Studenica Chronicle – a 14th century chronicle from 1350–1400. Oldest survived copy in a 16th-century manuscript, together with a younger annals.
Cetinje Chroniclecovers events from 14th century until the end of 16th century, though the manuscript collection is from the end of the 16th century.
Yongle Encyclopedia (永乐大典;永樂大典;Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn; 'The Great Canon [or Vast Documents] of the Yongle Era'). It was one of the world's earliest, and the then-largest, encyclopaedia commissioned by theYongle Emperor of China'sMing dynasty in 1403, completed about 1408. About 400 volumes (less than 4%) of a 16th-century manuscript set survive today.[48]
Claudio Monteverdi composed at least eighteen operas, but only three (L'Orfeo,L'incoronazione di Poppea, andIl ritorno d'Ulisse in patria) and the famous aria, Lamento, from his second operaL'Arianna have survived.
Jean Racine's first play,Amasie (1660) is lost. In addition, his biography ofLouis XIV,Vie de Louis XIV, was destroyed in the fire atValincour's house.
John Milton wrote nearly two acts of a tragedy calledAdam Unparadiz'd, which was then lost.[59]
Works byBuhurizade Mustafa Itri, a major Ottoman musician, composer, singer and poet, who is known to have composed more than a thousand works, only forty of which survive to the present.
Olympica,René Descartes's youthful account of dreams and their interpretations, was last excerpted by Leibnitz in 1675.[60]L'Art de l'escrime by Descartes, a book about fencing, was also lost.
De non existentia Dei byKazimierz Łyszczyński, an atheist philosophical treatise, destroyed after the trial and execution of Łyszczyński (1689). Fragments survived in court records.[61]
All poems and literary works byCarlo Gimach, except for the cantataApplauso Genetliaco, are believed to be lost.[62]
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's journal was burned by her daughter on the grounds that it contained too much scandal and satire.
Edward Gibbon burned the manuscript of hisHistory of the Liberty of the Swiss.
Adam Smith had most of his manuscripts destroyed shortly before his death. In his last years he had been working on two major treatises, one on the theory and history of law and one on the sciences and arts. The posthumously publishedEssays on Philosophical Subjects (1795) probably contain parts of what would have been the latter treatise.[63]
The Green-Room Squabble or a Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius, a 1756 play bySamuel Foote, is lost.
Haydn's "Double Bass Concerto", of which only the first two measures survive; the rest were burned and destroyed. Supposedly a copy of it may exist somewhere, according to many different speculations.
Aaron Burr's farewell address to the U.S. Senate in 1805 has been lost, though the general outlines are known through contemporaneous comments. Most of Burr's letters and papers from prior to 1812 were subsequently lost in a shipwreck which resulted in Burr being one of the least understood of the American Founding Fathers, especially given that his, in general, morally upstanding life is often overshadowed by his infamous duel with fellow Founding Father Alexander Hamilton who was the less popular, and less liked, of the two.[66]
TheMemoirs ofLord Byron, destroyed by his literary executors led byJohn Murray on 17 May 1824. The decision to destroy Byron's manuscript journals, which was opposed only byThomas Moore, was made in order to protect his reputation. The two volumes of memoirs were dismembered and burned in the fireplace at Murray's office.[67]
The Scented Garden by SirRichard Francis Burton, a manuscript of a new translation from Arabic ofThe Perfumed Garden, was burned by his widow, Lady Isabel Burtonnée Arundel, along with other papers.
Parts two and three ofDead Souls byNikolai Gogol, burned by Gogol at the instigation of the priest Father Matthew Konstantinovskii.[68]
At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing fromLewis Carroll's thirteen diaries, destroyed by his family for reasons frequently debated.
The son of theMarquis de Sade had all of de Sade's unpublished manuscripts burned after de Sade's death in 1814; this included the immense multi-volume workLes Journées de Florbelle.[69]
A large section of the manuscript forMary Shelley'sLodore was lost in the mail to the publisher, and Shelley was forced to rewrite it.
Alexander Ivanovich Galich's completed manuscriptsUniversal Rights andPhilosophy of Human History were destroyed in a fire, an event the grieved Galich did not long survive.
Margaret Fuller's manuscript on the history of the1849 Roman Republic was lost in the 1850 shipwreck in which Fuller herself, her husband and her child perished. In Fuller's own estimation, as well as of others who saw it, this work, based on her first-hand experience in Rome, might have been her most important work.
A schoolmate ofArthur Rimbaud claimed that he lost a notebook of poems by the famous poet, the "Cahier Labarrière", which reportedly contained about 60 poems (if true, and if all were distinct from his known verse poems, this would represent about as much in volume).[70] Paul Verlaine also mentioned a text called "La Chasse spirituelle", claiming it to be Rimbaud's masterpiece, which was never found (although afake was published in 1949).
Joseph Smith's translation of theBook of Lehi from theMormonGolden Plates was either hidden, destroyed, or modified by Lucy Harris, the wife of transcriberMartin Harris. Whatever their fate, the pages were not returned to Joseph Smith and were declared "lost." Smith did not recreate the translation.[71]
Abraham Lincoln'sLost Speech, given on May 29, 1856, inBloomington, Illinois. Traditionally regarded as lost because it was so engaging that reporters neglected to take notes, the speech is believed to have been an impassioned condemnation ofslavery.[73]
L. Frank Baum's theatre inRichburg, New York, burned to the ground. Among the manuscripts of Baum's original plays known to have been lost areThe Mackrummins,Matches (which was being performed the night of the fire),The Queen of Killarney,Kilmourne, or O'Connor's Dream, and the complete musical score forThe Maid of Arran, which survives only in commercial song sheets, which include six of the eight songs and no instrumental music.
Leon Trotsky describes the loss of an unfinished play manuscript (a collaboration with Sokolovsky) in hisMy Life, end of chapter 6 (sometime between 1896 and 1898).[74]
George Gissing abandoned many novels and destroyed the incomplete manuscripts. He also completed at least three novels which went unpublished and have been lost.[75]
During the many years of his career,Mark Twain produced a vast number of pieces, of which a considerable part, especially in his earlier years, was published in obscure newspapers under a great variety of pen names, or not published at all. Joe Goodman, who had been Twain's editor when he worked at theVirginia City, Nevada, "Territorial Enterprise", declared in 1900 that Twain wrote some of the best material of his life during his "Western years" in the late 1860s, but most of it was lost.[76] In addition, many of Twain's speeches and lectures have been lost or were never written down. Researchers continue to seek this material, some of which was rediscovered as recently as 1995.[citation needed]
Although frequently referenced in theOxford English Dictionary and traceable in several catalogues of libraries and booksellers, no copy of the 1852 bookMeanderings of Memory by Nightlark could be tracked down.[77]
The ReverendFrancis Kilvert's diaries were edited and censored, possibly by his widow, after his death in 1879. In the 1930s, the surviving diaries were passed on toWilliam Plomer, who transcribed them, before returning the originals to Kilvert's closest living relative, a niece, who destroyed most of the manuscripts. Plomer's own transcription was destroyed in theBlitz. He only learned of the originals' destruction when he planned to publish a complete edition in the 1950s.
Jean Sibelius'sKarelia Music was destroyed after its premiere in 1893. What survives today fully are the Karelia Ouverture and theKarelia Suite. Most of the music was reconstructed in 1965 by Kalevi Kuosa, from the original parts that had survived. The parts that hadn't survived were those of the violas, cellos, and double basses. Based on Kuosa's transcription, the Finnish composers Kalevi Aho and Jouni Kaipainen have individually reconstructed the complete music to Karelia Music.
The musical score toGilbert and Sullivan’s 1871 operaThespis has been mostly lost with only 3 musical passages being known to survive.[78]
Nathaniel Hawthorne'sSeven Tales of my Native Land was personally destroyed after being rejected by publishers.[79]
James Joyce's playA Brilliant Career (which he burned) and the first half of his novelStephen Hero. His grandson Stephen later burned Nora Joyce's letters to James as well.
J. Meade Falkner left an almost complete fourth and last novel on a train and felt he was too old to start again.
John P. Marquand wrote an early novel calledYellow Ivory in collaboration with his friend W. A. Macdonald.[81]
Various parts ofDaniel Paul Schreber's"Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" (original German title"Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken") (1903) were destroyed by his wife and doctor Flesching for protecting his reputation, which was mentioned bySigmund Freud as highly important in his essay"The Schreber Case" (1911).
L. Frank Baum wrote four novels for adults that were never published and disappeared:Our Married Life andJohnson (1912),The Mystery of Bonita (1914), andMolly Oodle (1915). Baum's son claimed that Baum's wife burned these, but this was after being cut out of her will. Evidence that Baum's publisher received these manuscripts survives. Also lost are Baum's 1904 short stories "Mr. Rumple's Chill" and "Bess of the Movies", as well as his early playsKilmourne, or O'Connor's Dream (opened April 4, 1883) andThe Queen ofKillarney (1883).
In 1907,August Strindberg destroyed a play,The Bleeding Hand, immediately after writing it. He was in a bad mood at the time and commented in a letter that the piece was unusually harsh, even for him.
In 1922, a suitcase with almost all ofErnest Hemingway's work to date was stolen from a train compartment at theGare de Lyon in Paris, from his wife. It included a partialWorld War I novel.[5]
The novelsTobold andTheodor byRobert Walser are lost, possibly destroyed by the author, as is a third, unnamed novel. (1910–1921)
Jean Sibelius burned his unfinished 8th Symphony and several of his unfinished works in the 1920s.
The original version ofUltramarine byMalcolm Lowry was stolen from his publisher's car in 1932, and the author had to reconstruct it.
Franz Kafka's last lover,Dora Diamant, ignored his wishes to have his works destroyed posthumously. Instead she kept some 20 notebooks and 35-36 letters. The Gestapo in 1933 seized all papers in her home, including these notebooks and letters, in their search to find communist propaganda. Only three of these letters have been discovered since. Furthermore, whenMax Brod, Kafka's literary executor who similarly ignored his wishes, died in 1968, he left Kafka's papers to his secretary, who left them to her daughters. The papers then passed into the ownership of theNational Library of Israel in 2016. After a lengthy legal dispute between the library and the daughters, many of these papers have yet to be published.
Yogananda'sAutobiography of a Yogi quotes extensively from Richard Wright's travel diaries in 1935/6. Following Wright's death they have become 'lost'.
In 1938George Orwell wroteSocialism and War, an "anti-war pamphlet" for which he could not find a publisher. Although many previously unknown letters and other documents relating to Orwell have been discovered in recent years, no trace of this pamphlet has yet come to light. With the beginning ofWorld War II Orwell's views onpacifism were to change radically, so he may well have destroyed the manuscript.
Lost papers and a possible unfinished novel byIsaac Babel, confiscated by the NKVD, May 1939.[82]
Five volumes of poetry and a drama, all in manuscript, bySaint-John Perse were destroyed at his house outside Paris soon after he had gone into exile in the summer of 1940. The diplomat Alexis Léger (Perse's real name) was a well-known and uncompromising anti-Nazi and his house was raided by German troops. The works had been written during his diplomat years, but Perse had decided not to publish any new writing until he had retired from diplomacy.
Walter Benjamin had a completed manuscript in his suitcase when he fled France and arrest by the Nazis in the summer of 1940. He committed suicide inPortbou, Spain on September 26, 1940, and the suitcase and its contents disappeared.
There are reports thatBruno Schulz worked on a novel calledThe Messiah, but no trace of this manuscript survived his death (1942).
Margot Frank's diary was never found (1944). OfThe Diary of Anne Frank, the original volume or volumes covering the period between December 1942 and December 1943 was never found, and assumed to have been taken by the Nazis who raided the hiding place. This period is only known from the version Anne rewrote for preservation, which is known to have been in many ways different from her original.[83]
In 1958, while working on the last chapter,William H. Gass's novelOmensetter's Luck was stolen off of his desk, forcing him to begin from scratch.
The manuscript forSylvia Plath's unfinished second novel, provisionally titledDouble Exposure, orDouble Take, written 1962–63, disappeared some time before 1970.[5]
Several pages of the original screenplay forWerner Herzog'sAguirre, der Zorn Gottes were reportedly thrown out of the window of a bus after one of his football teammates threw up on them.
The screenplay for the proposedDean Stockwell–Herb Berman filmAfter the Gold Rush is reportedly lost.
Diaries ofPhilip Larkin – burned at his request after his death on 2 December 1985. Other private papers were kept, contrary to his instructions.
The fourth novel ofSasha Sokolov have been lost when the Greek house where it was written burned down in the second half the 1980s.
Jacob M. Appel's first novel manuscript,Paste and Cover, was in the trunk of an automobile that was stolen in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1998. The vehicle was recovered, but the manuscript was not.[85]
Terry Pratchett's unfinished works were destroyed in 2017 after his death, fulfilling his last will; his computerhard drive containing his unfinished works was deliberately crushed by asteamroller.[86][87][88]
TheLibrary of Alexandria, the largest library in existence during antiquity, was destroyed at some point in time between the Roman and Muslim conquests of Alexandria.
Aztec emperorItzcoatl (ruled 1427/8–1440) ordered the burning of all historicalAztec codices in an effort to develop a state-sanctioned Aztec history and mythology.
During theDissolution of the Monasteries, many monastic libraries were destroyed. Worcester Abbey had 600 books at the time of the dissolution. Only six of them have survived intact to the present day. At the abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York, a library of 646 volumes was destroyed, leaving only three surviving books. Some books were destroyed for their precious bindings, others were sold off by the cartload, including irreplaceable early English works. It is believed that many of the earliestAnglo-Saxon manuscripts were lost at this time.
"A great nombre of them whych purchased those supertycyous mansyons, resrved of those lybrarye bokes, some to serve theyr jakes [i.e., astoilet paper], some to scoure candelstyckes, and some to rubbe their bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and soapsellers ..." —John Bale, 1549
Many works ofAnglo-Saxon literature, mostly unique and unpublished, were burned when a fire broke out in theCotton library atAshburnham House on 23 October 1731. However, the only surviving manuscript ofBeowulf survived the fire and was printed for the first time in 1815.
In 1193, theNalanda University was sacked by[89]Bakhtiyar Khilji.[90] The burning of the library continued for several months and "smoke from the burning manuscripts hung for days like a dark pall over the low hills."[91]
The library of theHanlin Academy, containing irreplaceable ancient Chinese manuscripts, was mostly destroyed in 1900 during theBoxer Rebellion.[92]
TheSikh Reference Library in Amritsar, a collection of rare books, newspapers, manuscripts, and other literary works related to Sikhism and India, was looted and incinerated by Indian troops during the 1984Operation Blue Star. The missing literature has not been recovered to this day and is presumed to be lost.[93][94][95][96][97][98] The library hosted a vast collection of an estimated 20,000 literary works just before the destruction, including 11,107 books, 2,500 manuscripts, newspaper archives, historical letters, documents/files, and others.[99]
Lesbian Love, byEva Kotchever, had only 150 copies published "for private circulation only" in 1925. HistorianJonathan Ned Katz searched and found the only known copy, owned by Nina Alvarez, who had found the book in the lobby of her apartment building in 1998 in Albany, New York. Records show that another copy was held in the Sterling Library at Yale University, but it has not been located.[101]
Henri Poincaré's prize-winning submission for the 1889 celestial mechanics contest of kingOscar II was thought to be lost. While this version was being printed, Poincaré himself discovered a serious error. The existing version was recalled and then replaced by a heavily modified and corrected version, now regarded as the seminal description ofchaos theory. The original erroneous submission was thought to be lost, but it was found in 2011.[104]
W. A. Mozart andAntonio Salieri are known to have composed together a cantata for voice and piano calledPer la ricuperata salute di Ofelia which was celebrating the return to stage of the singerNancy Storace, and which has been lost, although it had been printed byArtaria in 1785.[105] The music had been considered lost until November 2015, when German musicologist and composerTimo Jouko Herrmann identified the score while searching for music by one of Salieri's ostensible pupils,Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, in the archives of the Czech Museum of Music inPrague.[106]
A Tale of Kitty in Boots byBeatrix Potter, the handwritten manuscripts for this story were found in school notebooks, including a few illustrations. She intended to finish the book, but was interrupted by wars and marriage and farming. It was found nearly 100 years later and published for the first time in September 2016.[107]
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is presented as a series of images ostensibly created by one Harris Burdick, who had intended to use them for his children's books before he mysteriously disappeared. Each image is accompanied by a title and a single line of text, which encourage readers to create their own stories.
H. P. Lovecraft wrote that all the original Arabic copies ofThe Necronomicon (Al Azif) have been destroyed, as well as the Arabic to Greek translations. Only five Greek to Latin translations are held by libraries, though copies may exist in private collections.[108]
^J. Green, F. McIntyre, P. Needham (2011), "The Shape of Incunable Survival and Statistical Estimation of Lost Editions",Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 105 (2), pp. 141–175. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/680773
^Westenholz, Joan Goodnick (1989). "Enḫeduanna, En-Priestess, Hen of Nanna, Spouse of Nanna". In Behrens, Hermann; Loding, Darlene; Roth, Martha T. (eds.).DUMU-E-DUB-BA-A : Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg. Philadelphia, PA: The University Museum. pp. 539–556.ISBN0-934718-98-9.
^Jacoby, Felix (1926).Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Teil 2, Zeitgeschichte. – B. Spezialgeschichten, Autobiographien und Memoiren, Zeittafeln [Nr. 106-261]. Berlin: Weidmann. pp. 752–769, no. 138, "Ptolemaios Lagu".OCLC769308142.
^*A. Nowicki,Pięć fragmentów z dzieła "De non-existentia dei" Kazimierza Łyszczyńskiego (by a script fromLibrary of Kórnik nr 443), "Euhemer", nr 1, 1957, pp. 72–81.
^Gordon L. Thomas (1953). "Aaron burr's farewell address".Quarterly Journal of Speech.39 (3):273–282.doi:10.1080/00335635309381878. "Except for some of his court-room speeches [...] no verbatim reports of his speeches are extant."
^Moore, Doris Langley (August 1959)."Byron's Lost Memoirs".theatlantic.com. RetrievedAugust 22, 2023.
^Allen, Charles (2002).The Buddha and the Sahibs. London: John Murray.
^Scott, David (May 1995). "Buddhism and Islam: Past to Present Encounters and Interfaith Lessons".Numen.42 (2):141–155.doi:10.1163/1568527952598657.JSTOR3270172.
^Gertrude Emerson Sen (1964).The Story of Early Indian Civilization. Orient Longmans.
