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Having a pleasant Wednesday afternoon? Prepare to get sad! Wikipedia has an excellent article on lost work, explained thusly: “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.” It’s a staggering list, but for your reading convenience I’ve gone ahead and collected some of the most depressing items here:
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. [Higgins: Aeschylus is pictured at right.]
Ur-Hamlet - an earlier version of the play Hamlet predating William Shakespeare’s version, author believed to be Thomas Kyd.
Love’s Labour’s Won, lost play 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.
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.
At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Lewis Carroll’s 13 diaries, destroyed by his family for reasons frequently debated.
James Joyce’s play “A Brilliant Career” (which he burned) and the first half of his novel “Stephen Hero” (which may yet turn up)
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, written 1962-63, disappeared some time before 1970.
If that’s not enough, there’s plenty more at Wikipedia. (Particularly impressive: lost Biblical texts.)
(Via Anarchaia.)
About the Ur-Hamlet, some scholars have suggested that the “lost” play is actually what we call the first quarto, or “bad quarto,” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet - for which we do have a script. So it might not actually be lost.
posted by Tim on 2-27-2008 at 5:56 pm
I was on the Lost Work’s pages of Wikipedia about three weeks ago and it was really depressing. I especially hated reading about all of the old lost silent films and how the majority of them will probably never be uncovered.
posted by Jake Le Master on 2-27-2008 at 7:53 pm
I was surprised Queen Victoria’s diaries weren’t listed in the Wikipedia entry. After her death, her daughter edited and then destroyed her diaries. About 1/3 of the writings were lost.
posted by Camille on 2-27-2008 at 8:00 pm
I’d heard that Red Skelton was so incensed at his cancellation by CBS, that he said something to the effect of, “I own the rights to all those tapes, and I have ordered them to be burned upon my death.” On whether that has happened or not, Wikipedia falls silent. However, the lack of availability of the old CBS episodes on DVD or whatnot leads me to believe that that actually happened.
Would be a true loss, if it did. Those were great television moments.
posted by mike on 2-28-2008 at 7:13 am
I’d never heard of Love’s Labour’s Won until watching season two of the new Doctor Who series . . . and even then I half thought they made it up just for that episode!
posted by nutmeag on 2-28-2008 at 7:15 am
Memoirs of Lord Byron
I bet that made for some interesting reading!
It’s so sad when something unique disappears.
posted by punkinsmom on 2-28-2008 at 3:13 pm
I don’t know about the missing half of the second novel, but all the rest of Sylvia Plath’s manuscripts are stored in the rare book room at my college (which coincidentally was also her college). Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the librarians were hiding half of the second novel, or holding on to it without realizing that they had it. Or maybe some student just took it out to do a research paper and forgot to return it. It could happen…. :-)
posted by Julia on 2-28-2008 at 6:30 pm