Lost work

From Free net encyclopedia

A lost work is a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work. Deliberate destruction of works may be termed literary crime or literary vandalism.

The term is most commonly applied to works from the classical world, although it is increasingly used in relation to more modern works.

Contents

[edit]

Notable lost works

[edit]

Classical world

[edit]

Individual works

[edit]

Multiple works

  • Lost plays of Aeschylus. He is believed to have written some 90 plays of which 6 plays survive. A seventh play is attributed to him. Fragments of his play Achilles were discovered in the wrappings of a mummy in the 1990s.
  • Lost poems of Alcaeus. Of a reported ten scrolls, there exist only quotes and numerous fragments.
  • Lost choral poems of Alcman. Of six books of choral lyrics 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 1960's, many more fragments were discovered and published from a dig at Oxyrhynchus.
  • Lost poems of Anacreon. Of the five books of lyrical pieces mentioned in the Suda and by Athenaeus, only mere fragments collected from the citations of later writers now exist.
  • Lost works of Anaximander. There are a few extant fragments of his works.
  • Lost plays of Aristarchus of Tegea. Of seventy pieces, only the titles of two of his plays, with a single line of the text have survived.
  • Lost plays of Aristophanes. He wrote forty plays, eleven of which survive.
  • Lost works of Aristotle. It is believed that we have about one fifth of his original works.
  • Lost works of Callimachus. Of about 800 works, in verse and prose; only six hymns, sixty-four epigrams and some fragments survive; a considerable fragment of the epic Hecale, was discovered in the Rainer papyri.
  • Lost works of Chrysippus. Of over 700 written works, none survive, except a few fragments embedded in the works of later authors.
  • Lost works of Cicero. Of his books, six on rhetoric have survived, and parts of seven on philosophy.
  • Lost works of Democritus. He wrote extensively on ethics, of which little remains.
  • Lost works of Ennius. Only fragments of his works survive.
  • Lost works of Empedocles. Little of what he wrote survives today.
  • Lost plays of Epicharmus of Kos. He wrote between 35 and 52 comedies, many of which have been lost or exist only in fragments.
  • Lost plays of Euripides. He is believed to have written over ninety plays, eighteen of which have survived. Fragments, some substantial, of most other plays also survive.
  • Lost plays of Eupolis. Of the 17 plays attributed to him, only fragments remain.
  • Lost works of Heraclitus. His writings only survive in fragments quoted by other authors.
  • Lost works of Hippasus. Few of his original works now survive.
  • Lost works of Hippias. 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 poems of Ibycus. According to the Suda, he wrote seven books of lyrics.
  • Lost works of Kleitomachos. According to Diogenes Laertius, he wrote some 400 books, of which none are extant today, although a few titles are known.
  • Lost works of Leucippus. No writings exist which we can attribute to him.
  • Lost works of Melissus of Samos. Only fragments preserved in other writers' works exist.
  • Lost plays of Menander. He wrote over a hundred comedies of which one survives. Fragments of a number of his plays survive.
  • Lost works of Philemon. Of his ninety-seven works, fifty-seven are known to us only as titles and fragments.
  • Lost poetry of Pindar. 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 of Plautus. He wrote approximately one hundred and thirty plays, of which twenty-one survive.
  • Rhetorical works of Julius Pollux.
  • Lost works of Posidonius. All of his works are now lost. Some fragments exist, as well as titles and subjects of many of his books.[2]
  • Lost works of Proclus. A number of his commentaries on Plato are lost.
  • Lost works of Pythagoras. No texts by him survive.
  • Lost plays of Rhinthon. Of thirty-eight plays, only a few titles and lines have been preserved.
  • Lost poems of Sappho. Only a few full poems and fragments of others survive.
  • Lost poems of Simonides of Ceos. Of his poetry we possess two or three short elegies, several epigrams and about 90 fragments of lyric poetry.
  • Lost plays of Sophocles. Of 123 plays, 27 survive, with fragments of others.
  • Lost poems of Stesichorus. Of several long works, significant fragments survive.
  • Lost works of Theodectes. Of his fifty tragedies, we have the names of about thirteen and a few unimportant fragments. His treatise on the art of rhetoric and his speeches are lost.
  • Lost works of Xenophanes. Fragments of his poetry survive only as quotations by later Greek writers.
  • Lost works of Zeno of Elea. None of his works survive intact.
[edit]

Early religious texts

[edit]

Lost Christian texts

[edit]
Lost Books of the Old Testament
  • Book of the Covenant
  • Book of the Wars of the Lord
  • Book of Jasher (aka Book of the Upright, aka Sefer haYashar)
  • The Manner of the Kingdom/Book of Statutes
  • Book of the Acts of Solomon
  • Annals of King David
  • Book of Samuel the Seer
  • Book of Nathan the Prophet
  • Book of Gad the Seer
  • Prophecy of Ahijah
  • Visions of Iddo the Seer
  • Book of Shemaiah the Prophet
  • Iddo Genealogies
  • Story of Prophet Iddo
  • Book of Jehu
  • Acts of Uziah
  • Sayings of the Seers
  • Chronicles of King Ahasuerus
  • Chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia
[edit]
Lost Books of the New Testament
  • Nazarene Prophecy
  • Epistle to Corinth
  • Earlier Epistle to the Ephesians
  • Epistle from Laodicea to the Colossians
  • Missing Epistle of Jude
[edit]
Lost New Testament apocrypha
[edit]

3rd century

  • Various works of Tertullian. 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 damaged Codex Agobardinus in 814 AD).
[edit]

4th century

[edit]

14th century

[edit]

15th century

[edit]

16th century

  • Cardenio and Love's Labour's Won - lost plays by William Shakespeare.
  • Maya codices ceremonially destroyed by Diego de Landa (1524-1579), bishop of Yucatán, on 12 July 1562. At least 27 codices and approximately 5,000 Mayan "idols" were burnt.
  • The Ocean to Cynthia - a poem by Sir Walter Raleigh of which only fragments are known.
  • During the Dissolution 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 earliest Anglo-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, some to scoure candelstyckes, and some to rubbe their bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and soapsellers…" — John Bale, 1549
[edit]

17th century

[edit]

18th century

[edit]

19th century

  • Memoirs of Lord Byron - destroyed by his literary executors led by John Murray on 17 May 1824. The decision was made to destroy Byron's manuscript journals in order to protect his reputation. Opposed only by Thomas Moore, the two volumes of memoirs were dismembered and burnt in the fireplace at Murray's office.
  • The Scented Garden by Sir Richard Francis Burton - manuscript of a new translation from Arabic of The Perfumed Garden, was burnt by his widow, Lady Isabel Burton née Arundel, along with other papers.
  • Parts two and three of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol - burnt by Gogol at the instigation of the priest Father Matthew Konstantinovskii.
  • Large sections of Lewis Carroll's diary, destroyed by his family for reasons frequently debated.
  • The son of the Marquis de Sade had all of de Sade's unpublished manuscripts burned after de Sade's death in 1814; this included the immense multi-volume work Les Journées de Florbelle.
  • Franz Liszt claimed to have written a manual of piano technique for the Geneva Conservatoire. This lost work would be an invaluable insight into the playing of probably the greatest pianist who ever lived.
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins burned all his early poetry on entering the priesthood.
  • In 1871, Gustave Flaubert buried a box of letters and papers as war approached; the box was never recovered.
  • A schoolmate of Arthur Rimbaud confessed he lost a notebook of poems by the famous poet.
  • The first draft of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History was sent to John Stuart Mill, whose maid mistakenly burned it, forcing Carlyle to rewrite it from scratch.
  • Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Lehi from the Mormon Golden Plates were either hidden, destroyed, or modified by Lucy Harris, the wife of transcriber Martin Harris. Whatever their fate, the pages were not returned to Joseph Smith and declared "lost." Smith did not recreate the translation.
  • Various works of Johannes Brahms. Brahms was a perfectionist who destroyed many of his own early works, including a violin sonata. He claimed once to have destroyed 20 string quartets before he issued his official First in 1873. When he retired, he even destroyed manuscripts of his fifth and sixth symphonies.
  • Symphony No. 8 (Sibelius). Composer Jean Sibelius mysteriously destroyed his last symphony.
  • The library of the Hanlin Academy, containing irreplaceable ancient Chinese manuscripts, was mostly destroyed in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion [7].
[edit]

20th century

  • "Text I" of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - a 250,000 word manuscript lost at Reading railway station by T. E. Lawrence in December 1919.
  • The Irish Public Records Office in Dublin - burnt by the IRA in 1922, destroying 1,000 years of state and religious archives.
  • Diaries of Philip Larkin - burnt at his request after his death on 2 December 1985. Other private papers were kept, contrary to his instructions.
  • The original version of Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry was stolen from his publisher's car, and the author had to reconstruct it.
  • In 1922, a suitcase with almost all of Ernest Hemingway's work to date was stolen in Paris from his wife. It included a partial WWI novel.
  • The manuscript for Sylvia Plath's unfinished second novel, provisionally titled Double Exposure, or Double Take, disappeared.
  • Leon Trotsky describes the loss of an unfinished play manuscript (a collaboration with Sokolovsky) in his My Life, end of chapter 6.[8]
  • Lost papers and a possible unfinished novel by Isaac Babel, confiscated by the NKVD. [9]
  • There are reports that Bruno Schulz worked on a novel called The Messiah, but no trace of this manuscript survived his death.
[edit]

See also

[edit]

Further reading

  • Stuart Kelly - The Book of Lost Books (Viking, 2005) ISBN 0670914991
  • Leo Deuel - Testaments Of Time: The Search for Lost Manuscripts and Records (New York: Knopf, 1965).
  • Hermann W.G. Peter - Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae (2 vols., B.G. Teubner, Leipzig, 1870, 2nd ed. 1914-16)
  • Glen Dudbridge- Lost books of Medieval China (London: The British Library, 2000)
[edit]

External links

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Lost_work"