6 Books Gone Forever.

Here are 6 pieces of literature lost in history. From Ernest Hemingway to Sylvia Plath, these great losses to literature will never be read.
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BOOKS MENTIONED:
(These are Amazon Affiliate links, If you buy anything through these it will support the channel):
📚 Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
amzn.to/3wJWZx1
📚 Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
amzn.to/3wNkSDT
📚 William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
amzn.to/3wHZsYF
📚 Homer - The Iliad and the Odyssey
amzn.to/3Tchl9o
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FURTHER READING:
This video is obviously not an exhaustive list. Here are some of the best things I found if you want to read more about lost books:
This downfall of this book is that it has so much biography on the authors, but the good thing about it is it does a good job of covering a lot of lost works.
📚 Stuart Kelly - The Book of Lost Books
amzn.to/4a2LUp8
📰 Mental Floss - 11 Books That Are Probably Lost Forever
www.mentalfloss.com/posts/boo...
🎞️The British Museum - Ming: Yongle Dadian, The Great Canon of Yongle Era
• Ming: Yongle Dadian, T...
OTHER SOURCES:
📰 The Smithsonian - The Top 10 books lost to Time
www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-c...
📰 Library Mysteries: Books that have been permanently lost
www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05...
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Music from Epidemic Sound
Stock Footage from Envato, Pexels
Drawings made by me!

[@Astyanaz]

From the time she was a child until the time she died, Emily Brontë worked on an epic fantasy. After she died, Charlotte Brontë destroyed it.

[@MegaGraceiscool]

Evil

[@MarianPowell]

The private libraries of the Roman Empire. For several centuries, wealthy people had libraries. You had to be wealthy because papyrus books/scrolls must be recopied frequently. As the empire crumbled, so did the libraries. One was found at Herculenium where the scrolls were preserved by the volcanic eruption. They are only now able to read them but it's a slow, very expensive process. This library contains well over 1000 scrolls which shows what got lost.

[@Theomite]

It's so cool that we have scanners that can read them without unfurling them. Who knows what we'll find.

[@yippee8570]

But how incredible to finally be able to read these documents!

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

@@yippee8570 There have been more interesting findings from the immense dump of papyri in a place called Oxyrinchus, where Egyptians of the Hellenistic and Roman ages dumped used papyri for centuries. The amount of material is so immense that the reading began in 1898 and has not stopped yet. Among the finds are an entirely unknown Greeek history of considerable importance, poems by Sappho and others, parts of plays by Menander, Christian texts, commentaries that add to our knowlege of Greek mythology, and a simply terrifying amount of administrative documents, that absolutely revolutionized our knowledge of Roman administration and society. And other papyri are still being found elsewhere in Egypt, including a touching letter from an Egyptian recruit in the Roman army to his father.

[@joelharris4399]

That's the reason families of prominent writers create foundations or estates to catalog, preserve and safeguard their loved ones' works for posterity. You can then begin imagine the devastation wrought by the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Ancient knowledge, gone forever!

[@Theomite]

It can work against them too. Frank Zappa's wife has hoarded his catalog since his death *against* his wishes because she's adamant about his work only being available in the proper and financially superior situations. Even his former bandmates aren't allowed to play his songs without her say-so. Jimi Hendrix's family refuses to authorize use of his music in any media that involves sex & drug use. Considering that his music was as iconic as the Dope Era/Free Love Age it was released in, this is a hard criteria to match. You know how many people got high and laid to his music? Welp, can't depict that. Gena Rowlands was married to John Cassavetes and has staunchly defended the official account of his legacy. But one of his scholars--Ray Carney--found previous edits of his work and she's not only stopped him from releasing it but tried to take it and actively destroy it as well.

[@joelharris4399]

@@Theomite Such examples you list refer to the jerks in history who try to take advantage of a siuation for selfish purposes. Outliers really. I take your point though👍

[@ShanghaiRooster]

@@Theomite In the case of Mr Carney, the allegation is that he has attempted to claim ownership of the Cassavetes material he unearthed rather than pass it to Gena Rowlands company. Similar claims have been made against him in regard to material entrusted to him by filmmaker Mark Rappaport, which Carney now insists was gifted to him. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't lessen his prestige as a film critic, but he shouldn't be put on a pedestal if the accusations are true.

[@Theomite]

@@ShanghaiRooster It's not him I'm worried about, it's Rowlands. Owner or not, Carney isn't likely to destroy the copies of ur-SHADOWS or FACES because of its historical value. Rowlands might be the kind of person who would do that to preserve a legacy.

[@ShanghaiRooster]

@@Theomite Gena would have a hard job destroying the first cut of Faces, which is held by the Library of Congress. Both the Criterion release of the film, and the BFI version (which I have but haven't yet watched) contain 'an alternate' opening sequence, 18 minutes on Criterion, 21 minutes on BFI - the latter also has a commentary on that material with Peter Bogdanovich and Al Ruban discussing the earlier version, which can hardly be said to be an attempt to 'suppress' the film. The first version of Shadows did get a couple of screenings in 1958, but was not well received, not least by Cassavetes himself, which is why they reshot around two thirds of the movie. Is it wrong to respect the wishes of the artist as to how their work is presented? Demanding the release of material rejected by the filmmaker (and why; to boost the ego of the 're-discoverer', surely not) is rather like demanding a musician release all the demos made in the process moving towards the final album (some of this stuff - by quite a few artists - has now been released of course, but it's as much for copyright reasons as anything in that if it wasn't officially released, and copyright extended, anybody could have legally done so in a few years).

[@jamescrouch1693]

The Chinese loss seems greatest. Much of the ancients has been lost. Very sad. Deeply sad.

[@Theomite]

Yeah that's an Alexandria-level erasure event and catastrophic. However, there are some surviving volumes, which prevents it from being a total loss.

[@hughcaldwell1034]

@@Theomite True it wasn't "total", but it still seems like it should beat out two Shakespeare plays.

[@jamescrouch1693]

I had never heard of the Chinese compilation. Of course, it's great to know, so thanks for telling so many of us.

[@dj1NM3]

@@hughcaldwell1034 ...and a single comedy by homer.

[@digitalnomad9985]

@@hughcaldwell1034That's the thing, it's big enough we don't KNOW the magnitude (in terms of quality) of the loss.

[@emperorpalpatine2531]

Most of the Anglo-Saxon work pre-1066 after it was burned by the Vikings at Lindisfarne. Also the few missing lines of Beowulf when he’s fighting the dragon

[@SonofSethoitae]

...what? Lindisfarne wasn't the main repository of Anglo-Saxon writing, and the raid on Lindisfarne was a hundred years before the golden age of Anglo-Saxon writing under Alfred the Great. And three hundred years before the Norman invasion. Anglo-Saxon works dissappeared because of the Normans, not the Vikings. And not because they were all burned in a single event, because English was replaced by French as the language of the court.

[@MicahMicahel]

weirdly the 'ottoman empire ' people burned down most libraries but spared one that had greek algebra in it... so we credit them with INVENTING algebra.. when t hey simply chose not to destroy it! They get full credit because they destroyed everything else... but algebra. So now everyone will tell you yhat they invented it. Imagine if they didn't burn all the other ancient libraries.. would we credit every greek work with the religion of peace?

[@SonofSethoitae]

@@MicahMicahel Nobody credits the Ottomans with inventing algebra. The main Muslim contributors to modern Algebra were Al-Khawarizmi, a Persian during the Abassid Caliphate, and Omar Kayyam, another Persian from the Seljuk Empire. Both of whom predate the Ottomans by several hundred years.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

No, much of the Anglo-Saxon - and Welsh - and Scottish - and Irish - and medieval English - literary heritage was destroyed by Henry VIII and the gaggle of thieves and looters who destroyed monasteries and burned all their contents. Just as their "reformation" colleagues did on the Continent.

[@MicahMicahel]

@@SonofSethoitae they got it from the Greeks! They are taking credit for it just because they didn't burn that Greek library down!

[@badwolftina8716]

Call me shallow if you will, but I still wonder about the lost episodes of classic Doctor Who, that the BBC recorded over because they reused the tapes. I know it's not great literature, but as a Doctor Who nerd, it's still painful.

[@bite-sizedshorts9635]

Johnny Carson's early shows were wiped for other shows to be taped.

[@Bethelaine1]

It’s not shallow, those tapes were part of a long running popular series. People all over the world are still watching it I think that counts for something.

[@ShanghaiRooster]

Some of those missing episodes at least still exist, and are in the hands of private collectors, or have turned up in the vaults of TV stations abroad. Obviously the chances of finding more do diminish with the passing years, but we have to live in hope. Last year two missing Hartnell episodes were found to exist - one is said to feature the Daleks, which means it must be from the mostly lost Daleks' Masterplan, but the collector is reluctant to return them to the BBC, apparently out of fear he could be prosecuted for theft of BBC material (even though they themselves had discarded it). Around the time of the 50th anniversary a large number of missing Troughton episodes were recovered, and amongst them would have been all the missing episodes of The Web Of Fear (episodes 2-6) which were found in Nigeria. Sadly, episode 3 disappeared in transit, and is suspected to have been sold to a greedy collector by an employee. This is the episode featuring the very first appearance of the then Lieutenant-Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, making its appeal obvious for the obnoxious person who decided they valued exclusivity over it above it being returned to the BBC.

[@ShanghaiRooster]

@@Bethelaine1 It does, and their loss says much about the nature of the BBC then (and to a different extent, even today). As my brother never tires of mentioning when the subject comes up, the BBC has a complete run of 'trooping the colour' dating back to when the ceremony was first broadcast. That it was decided by the suits was of cultural significance, whereas Doctor Who was not.

[@lucakat9262]

​@@bite-sizedshorts9635yes, I recently saw a video of Carson and Groucho Marx came on unexpectedly and it was funny. It said it was from 1965 but some people in the comments thought that it was taped later. Anyway, it was rare and whoever uploaded it found it in perfect color, very sharp. It was a very rare find indeed. I wish they could find more episodes of Carson out there as well.😊

[@jeffreymeyer1191]

Great video! Reminds me of how we’ve lost most silent movies.

[@EyeLean5280]

The poetry of Sappho? I thought for certain it would be included here. On the other hand, I wasn't aware of Homer's lost comedic poem, thanks for letting us know!

[@Theomite]

We have fragments of Sappho's works at least. Homer's 3rd book doesn't even have that. It;s not a competition, but Sappho wasn't entirely destroyed.

[@martineldritch]

Agree about the loss of Sappho's work. Plato called her the 10th muse, her poetry was that good.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

@@martineldritch Sappho's canon is being slowly expanded, mostly from finds in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, and the admittedly little we have is enough to make her one of the greatest poets who ever lived. It is by no means certain that the Margites ever was on the same level; the ancients mention it as a curiosity, not as a masterpiece like Aristophanes or Plautus; it is however true that a third epic by Homer, the Thebaid, is lost, save for a single line. And unlike the Margites, learned ancient authors like Pausanias describe it as being nearly as good as Iliad and Odyssey, and superior to any other epic.

[@willie0947]

The library at Alexandria

[@azraelvrykolakas157]

Alexandria much like babalon and Jericho actually fell apart more slowly than more dramatic accounts may claim. Like over centuries. And many of the documents in the library of Alexandria likely didn't meet their end there. Carthage did experience that level of devastation when the romans sacked them for like the second or third time. The romans took much of their art amd literature but none of it survives to this day.

[@digitalnomad9985]

They're starting to censor the Internet Archive.

[@DrawntoBooks]

Definitely a huge loss, by some estimates 40,000 scrolls were lost. I found it hard to figure out what exactly was lost though, there’s very little known about specific works that were in it.

[@lsedge7280]

@@DrawntoBooks Alexandria declined pretty slowly, not dramatically as people often like to imagine, and a lot of texts from Antiquity actually got translated and adopted by the Arabic world while they were lost in Europe for a time, later being translated back into European languages in the renaissance and post-renaissance periods, so it's quite likely that only a far smaller portions of the texts held at Alexandria are lost.

[@ellynneg.6926]

Nearly all the Greek plays, the works of Sappho, anything in Etruscan, the early Indian civilization that left plenty of surviving writing that no one can read, and the notebook of Cordwainer Smith whose loss made him give up on writing his science fiction stories. Also, the lost/unwritten parts of Canterbury Tales and the lost/unwritten parts of Faerie Queene. SInce Shakespeare's plays were mentioned, how about the scripts that were lost when the Globe burned? Several versions of the plays we know are just the best they could remember them. Some, we only have as bad quartos.

[@DrawntoBooks]

Yeah, pretty much all ancient literature, and most things before the printing press.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

The last eighteen chapters of Dante's Divine Comedy came within an inch of being lost, when the poet died without informing his sons of where he had put the manuscript. After an unsuccessful search, one of his friends had a dream of the poet's room, and where the manuscript was. He went and found it. He described it as a miracle, but it might just have been an intuition - after all, one room cannot have been rich in secret or undiscovered hiding places.

[@Theomite]

What about Aristotle's 2nd book of _Poetics_ analyzing Comedy? or any of Sappho's completed poems? or Euripedes' other 62 plays? or Frank Norris' 3rd volume in the Epic of the Wheat trilogy?

[@bearcb]

Aristotle's book on comedy at least was the pivot of the plot in The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

[@ObservingLibertarian]

We have absolutely *none* of Aristotle's completed works. What we have are recitations, incomplete drafts and transcribed lectures. All of his completed works were destroyed or looted. With how pivotal Aristotle's work has been to absolutely all scientific endeavors: we can't possibly begin to comprehend what wide spread circulation of his *completed works* could have done for or to the world. Especially if his writings had not been kept out of circulation for hundreds of years before being rediscovered in fragmented form. We don't even know the accuracy of _what is available_ because we don't know how well it was translated to the foreign tongue it was printed in as a result of being taken as loot. The world may well have lost close to a millennium of technological advancement as a result of having lost all of Aristotle's completed works, and the fragments having been sequestered in foreign lands among foreign hands for centuries.

[@regishel]

5. Sylvia Plath's lost book. 3. Losing the Yongle Encyclopedia. 2. All of the the history lost in the 1666 Great Fire of London. 1. The Destruction of The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

The Great Library was never destroyed. This is not only a fable, but it is well known to be a fable. Even here in KZbin, you have dozens of videos repeating the same fact: there was no catastrophic destruction of a great library at this or that moment. kzbin.info?search_query=library+of+alexandria+myth

[@jsalnut]

Also the loss of library of Alexandria is a travesty

[@NicholasMarshall]

The library of Alexander housed mostly tax documents.

[@Theomite]

@@NicholasMarshall So whoever burned it was pulling a Tyler Durden?

[@cjpreach]

I assumed that Alexandria's library was the single greatest literary loss in world history. But that China encyclopedia sounds like the Far East's equivalent to Alexandria.

[@Theomite]

@@cjpreach The House of Wisdom being destroyed by the Mongols is the Middle-Eastern equivalent.

[@blahblahblah6]

All tragic. We have, undoubtedly, regained some of the knowledge lost. But, some is gone forever.

[@marshall1oo627]

The Hemingway one is actually weirder than that. After Hadley lost his writing, he talked about how bad it hurt, but his actions didn’t match. His friends reported that he didn’t display any behaviors that showered he cared all that much. A lot of people came to him with assurance that they could help find the writing, but he didn’t take them up even though it wouldn’t have expensive for him. Ezra Pound even convinced Hemingway that losing the writing would be good for his (Hem’s) career. He mythologized himself as a destitute struggling writer in his Paris days. He pretended to be poor even though Hadley had a big trust fund. There’s a lot of scholarship on this history of his lost work, but the best synthesis of it is in Michael Reynolds “The Paris Years”

[@Theomite]

Thanks for this.

[@jeffreymeyer1191]

The Lost Second Book of Aristotle’s Poetics on Comedy. Aztec books burned by Spanish conquistadors and priests during the Spanish conquest of Yucatán.

[@llywrch7116]

And books written in Mayan. I believe only three manuscripts (or is it three & a partial manuscript?) have survived of the entire corpus

[@user-vd7nf2vj5j]

Yucatan was Maya territory

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

You mean Mayan.

[@Zebred2001]

I would nominate Bishop da Landa's burning of Mesoamerican books. There are only about 20 surviving books today.

[@zmani4379]

Nice video - that loss of Cardenio really stings; IMO it's one of the strongest episodes in the Cervantes novel - other grievous losses include Aristotle's treatise on comedy; Gogol's 3rd volume of Dead Souls; the whole corpus of Classical Greek drama, barring the 37-odd works that survived; 2000 yrs of Harappan civilization, till they find Rosetta Stone to decipher it; most of 1000-year corpus of the Persian Empire before Islam, which set the template for monotheism - also 2000 yrs of Akkadian culture preceding it, w Babylon

[@Theomite]

I'll bet you anything that pre-Islamic Iranian Zorastrian drama was a trip and a hoot to read.

[@HLPiepgrass]

Aztec codices…lots of knowledge lost.

[@damdamfino]

I’ve lost single chapters to a computer crash that made me abandon the whole book entirely. I can’t imagine losing the sole finished draft. 😢 the agony

[@bite-sizedshorts9635]

I've been using PCs since 1989 and haven't lost a single thing ever. I make backups. I still have the 1970 handwritten introduction to my first book which I finally completed in 1989.

[@damdamfino]

@@bite-sizedshorts9635 good for…you?

[@DrawntoBooks]

Agree, it’s the worst! I’m glad Google docs at least auto saves now. Adobe programs still fail me often 😩

[@denisadellinger4543]

I think the unfinished works of Jane Austen and the simple fact she died at 40 never to write again was my bad. 8 out of 10.

[@San-li9ml]

Not really lost works, just love greatness.

[@Work-cc5fw]

I believe Anton chekov’s “The Bet” was a three part story and the third part was lost. Leaving us with what we have today which is still a masterclass

[@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943]

Lost Greek works bring a tear to my eye.

[@apollonia6656]

Agree 100%

[@MicahMicahel]

the ottomans burned most of it but spared algebra.. so now we give them full credit for inventing it! Imagine of the religion of peace didn't burn down all the other stuff! We'd give them full credit for all those other greek works?

[@User_Un_Friendly]

James H Schmidt wrote the SEQUEL to his masterpiece, Witches of Karres. Publisher stopped publishing science fiction, manuscript lost during a move. Way underrated author, possibly my favorite from the golden age of Science Fiction. 😭😭😭

[@jacqueschouette7474]

1) The library at Alexandria, 2) the Mayan codices and 3) the Aztec codices.

[@CarolR-ub1fz]

Thank you. Good video.

[@champagne.future5248]

Little Women does a good job of capturing the grief of losing a book with the incident in which Jo’s sister burns her manuscript. In the early days of computers it was a common experience to accidentally delete a file that contained hours of work and not be able to retrieve it. I remember this happening to my Dad more than once. It’s the type of tragedy that can drive a man to drink or philosophy

[@DrawntoBooks]

We really take the auto-save function for granted these days!

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

It happened to me more than once. On one occasion, I blew 20,0000 words.

[@champagne.future5248]

@@fabiopaolobarbieri2286 my condolences

[@juicedgoose]

I'd put Gogol burning the second volume of Lost Souls on this list

[@Theomite]

Was he the one who used it for rolling papers for tobacco during the war because he thought he wouldn't make it out?

[@MattCellaneous]

The emperor Claudius is said to have written a 20 volume work on the history of the Etruscans that is known but lost and it breaks my heart every time I think about it.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

True. The small fragments that we have contain data about early Rome in the Etruscan period that are both fantastically important and not available, even by suggestion, anywhwere else. I believe myself that they were neglected because they contained narratives that contradicted the standard - and completely mythological - Roman "history" we find in Livy, Appian, Cassius Dio and Dionysius of Halikarnassos. EVen so, I would not mind having the lost books of Livy. Julius Caesar's speeches, that had a high reputation, are also lost in their entirety.

[@johnmcclure40]

Jacques Futrelle, one of the most influential mystery writers of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, had several unpublished stories with him when he died on the Titanic.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

But we have a vast corpus by him as it is. As a loss, it is not comparable to the Thebaid by Homer or to the lost plays of the great Athenians.

[@joncarroll2040]

The Yongle Encyclopedia is a good example of why you should make more than one copy of a major work. Also how much of a loss it really was depends on how much there was in the destroyed portions that did not exist in some other form, since it was an compilation not an original work. Are there, for example, any great works of Chinese literature or philosophy that we know were included that we do not currently have other copies of?

[@digitig]

They did make more than one copy. There were two copies: a bound copy and a manuscript copy. Both were lost.

[@KellySedinger]

[looks at the shelves over your shoulder] Oooooh, a Gustave Dore collection! I love his work! Fascinating video...I think back to Carl Sagan talking in COSMOS about the Library at Alexandria and the degree to which its destruction set the world back hundreds of years.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

Sagan was repeating a pernicious myth and proving his pathetic ignorance of intellectual history. Nobody can know everything, but as a historian, Sagan was a good astronomer.

[@KellySedinger]

@@fabiopaolobarbieri2286 Cool, bro, but what do you do, search for mentions of Alexandria and leap to correcting people? Are you just scrolling through and going, "Ach, here's another one!"

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

@@KellySedinger No, I was looking for interesting reactions and things I had not heard of, and I found both. But by the time I found this particular legend repeated for the tenth time, and often with even worse addenda, I decided it was time to shed a little light.

[@gibsonraymonda]

A lot of people will likely say Aristotle’s On Comedy, but deep down I wish Heraclitus’s philosophy book and Sappho’s poetry survived in something other than fragments.

[@ryanthegreat805]

Love these videos

[@DrawntoBooks]

Thank you!

[@manticore5733]

After Sir Terry Pratchett died his will required all his unfinished books and notes to be destroyed... apparently he had several in various states of completion but they're all lost.

[@Cabochon1360]

My first attempt at a novel was in 1976. One copy, on a typewriter (1938 Royal KHM); no carbon, and I didn't have the money for a photocopy. (Yes, that used to cost.) Got to 85,000 words, and then my asshole father burned it. Sure, I'm no Hemingway; it was a piece of crap; but that hurt. Derailed my writing efforts for years.

[@gy2gy246]

I like your humor and your knowledge of literature.

[@ericksbookshelf]

The burning of The Library of Alexandria was mankind's most devastating loss of, not just literature, but knowledge.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

It certainly does not reflect well on your knowledge. Alexander had no library. His successor Ptolemy set up a famous one in Alexandria in Egypt, which is the one whose burning is the legend you refer to. It never happened. kzbin.info?search_query=library+of+alexandria+myth

[@Serai3]

One word: SAPPHO.

[@DrawntoBooks]

Yes, Sappho for sure! I really debated that one, but I decided to just focus on single works in this video, once we start talking about losing entire bodies of work, most of ancient literature should/would be included.

[@coyoteartist]

Always loved that I had to write 10 pages on a man who might not have existed as a punishment for for the actions of 6 other people in 6th grade. On the other hand, I got a 98, two points off for Mother having misspelled poem because she typed it for me. I was still pissed I had to do it, but it was interesting at least.

[@richardpankey6483]

The loss of virtually the whole corpus of Punic literature. What scraps remain and what little we have translated into other languages suggest that those people of the classical era who claimed that Punic literature was equal to that of Latin and Greek were not wrong.

[@diedunkleakademie]

Aischylos, Sophokles and Euripides: each of them wrote about 100 plays. Only 10 percent survived.

[@MinionofNobody]

It would be nice to have the first book of Hemingway. This is especially true for scholars. On the other hand, the first books of great writers are often disappointing. Try reading the mature novels of important writers like Jack Kerouac and Robert Heinlein and then read their first novels. They just aren’t up to the standards of later works. In Heinlein’s case, it is easy to understand why his first novel was published after he died.

[@rogerbrown9833]

Shakespeare's "Cardenio" is not 100% lost. A composer named Robert Johnson wrote music for the early performances of many of Shakespeare's plays and his printed works included the texts for the songs from "Cardenio." Johnson was not a great composer and nobody paid much attention to his work, so it was only recently that the "Cardenio" lyrics were rediscovered.

[@billfreeman5914]

John Kennedy Toole wrote 1 great novel (A Confederacy of Dunces) but committed suicide when he couldn’t get it published. Who knows what else he might have written.💔

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

This sounds like a tragedy, but it's off the point. We are talking about finished and published works of art that have been lost after being published, read, and copied.

[@randallbutler6795]

Great video! Let's not forget Nalanda Mahavira . . .

[@ifnkovhg]

It would be nice if more of Aeschylus' trilogies survived whole -- his Oedipus trilogy, for example. I wish we could see how someone other than Sophocles tackled that myth. Euripides wrote an Oedipus play, as well. Throw that into the mix.

[@thomasdevine867]

Charlemagne wrote a book. He collected the dramatic poems of the pagan Franks. This would have been a priceless resource on pre Christian European culture. But his grandson destroyed the book in order to please his priests.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

This is imprecise in every possible way. Charlemagne had a collection of ancient Frankish lays and heroic songs written down and placed in the imperial library. Charlemagne himself wrote nothing, though he dictated diplomatic letters and legal orders. He may have been illiterate, though I don't read Einhard to say that: he certainly only started to learn to read and write as an adult, and Einahrd, his friend, who was himself very well read and able to judge, "he made only moderate progress". But he loved to have great works of the past read to him, and was, in that way, surprisingly learned. In the same way, there is a letter written to him for his own use from an abbot, explaining how solar eclipses work, which shows that he had a high level of scientific curiosity. But what is clear from Einhard's account of this matter is that his contemporaries did not regard the Frankish poems he had transcribed as anything valuable. In spite of his general admiration and affection for the Emperor, which comes through across his work, Einhard treats the transcription of Frankish poetry as a kind of quirk, curious and not very valuable personal feature. We, in our time, greatly regret the loss of these manuscripts, but to their contemporaries, they were the illiterate products of ignorauses. Jordanes and Paul the Deacon describe similar Gothic and Longobard items as "the fables of old women" and "ridiculous tales". The manuscripts were not destroyed "to please the priests" - you have obviously been reading nineteenth-century anti-clerical fables. Carolingian copyists, all of whom were in orders and thus "priests", copied everything they could, including material whose relevance to them one cannot imagine, such as the Notitia Dignitatum, a list of Roman government offices and bodies from the fourth century AD. The fact that the Frankish songs did not survive comes simply from the fact that Latin-speaking educated people from the period thought them contemptible and not worth copying.

[@sturgeonslawyer]

The burning of the Library of Alexandria. The loss of the second part of Aristotle's "Poetics."

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

There was no burning of the Library of Alexandria. When will this pernicious myth ever be put to rest? kzbin.info?search_query=library+of+alexandria+myth

[@sturgeonslawyer]

@@fabiopaolobarbieri2286 1. I am aware that Iulius Caesar burned, not the Library of Alexandria, but a warehouse where some of its books were kept. 2. Nonetheless, I feel morally certain that some of the books lost in that fire would be important to have today, if we only did. 3. I chose to use the commonly-known phrase as a metonym for what actually happened. 4. And two points to you for pedantry.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

@@sturgeonslawyer And ten demerits to you for making your "moral certainty" an argument.

[@kenknight5983]

I recommend everyone read 'Cory's Ancient Fragments'. It's a compilation of ancient authors quoting other authors, giving us small chunks of ancient books that are otherwise lost. You'll also get many snippets of lost ancient authors if you read Strabo's Geography

[@oliverbrownlow5615]

Stephen Crane is said to have started writing a novel about male prostitutes, called *Flowers in Asphalt,* intended as a companion piece to his already-published *Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,* but friends persuaded him that no one would be interested in reading about such a sordid topic, and he is believed to have destroyed the unfinished manuscript.

[@asmodeuszdewa7194]

Were can I buy them?

[@joeschembrie9450]

Stephen King and Jules Verne both became so discouraged that they threw away manuscripts that were to become their breakout novels. However, their wives rescued the manuscripts from oblivion. The lesson here is that your spouse can either break you or make you. So choose wisely.

[@DrawntoBooks]

haha, I have a file of spouses who either burned or saved manuscripts. Stevenson's wife burned the first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because she thought it was "utter nonsense." So I think I have to agree with you here!

[@joeschembrie9450]

@@DrawntoBooks That would be an interesting video, if I may suggest.

[@danielbrown3125]

When Sir Richard Burton died, his widow burned all of his unpublished work.

[@MilesBellas]

Gondal by Emily Brontë ?

[@DrawntoBooks]

I couldn’t figure out if that novel actually existed or not! There’s so much speculation as to if she wrote it or just talked about writing it.

[@jeroid]

Don't forget the Mayan codices and images destroyed by Catholic priests, including the mass book burning by Deigo De Landa in July 1562. The Aztecs also destroyed a lot of Mayan written history. Prefer to have a few of those survive over the lost Hemingway.

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

"Love's Labour Won" is just one of the comedies under a working title.

[@DrawntoBooks]

Yes, they originally thought it was an alternate title for Taming of the Shrew! But the bookkeepers list that has it on it also has Taming of the Shrew, so now they think it’s possible it was a unique work after all.

[@zaxxon4]

I'd argue that when an authors works are so nearly completely preserved as the works of Shakespeare, that anything lost may have been lost for a reason. There are plenty of cases where artists destroy their own work when they think that a piece is not good enough.

[@nicoleackerman205]

I could see why they divorced every time and argument occurred that probably got brought up.

[@N1RKW]

Perhaps the loss of the entire library of Alexandria might also score a 9 or a 10 here. (Apologies if this has already been mentioned.)

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

This must be the sixth restatement, in this comments page, of the same pernicious myth. IT. NEVER. HAPPENED. kzbin.info?search_query=library+of+alexandria+myth

[@timothygrier5486]

Thanks for an interesting video. Homer's work is from the 8th century BC not the 7th.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

How nice to find that there is someone who is certain about the issue.

[@renatoe9648]

The illiad and odisey where part of a series of books covering the whole war many of wich have been lost

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

Almost right. What you refer to is called the Epic Cycle, and its contents are lost in their entirety. What survives is a series of summaries made by a scholar called Proclus, and they include, The Cypria ("ongs of Cyprus"), after which followed the Iliad; then the Little Iliad, the Aethiopis, the Destruction of Troy, the Returns, and after that the Odyssey. There also were lost epics on other subjects, including one (the Thebaid) believed to be by Homer. A later poet, Quintus Smyraneus, set out the events from the end of the Iliad to the fall of Troy, in a thirteen-book epic that we still have.

[@francisgrizzlysmit4715]

what about the burning down of the library of Alexandria

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

Another believer in fables. kzbin.info?search_query=library+of+alexandria+myth

[@dragonshadow1902]

We can get the books all back just by locking 12 monkeys in a room with 12 typewriters for a year.

[@gy2gy246]

:-D

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

Thank you for a witty comment. It was needed.

[@allafradkin]

There is another story of a history lost forever. In the times of the Roman Empire there where a Germanic poeple called Goths, their history was written by a scholar named Cassiodorus, in a collection of many volumes called Gothic History , it did not survive and all We have is a very concise abridged version written by a one Jordanes . And it doesn’t really tell much not in the right chronology nor gives the best information. One thing this work of Jordanes did manage to do is to make poeple forget about these Germanic poeple and their history.. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

Have you READ Cassiodorus? Much of his work is still in existence, and it is TERRIBLE. He is the worst Latin stylist I have ever read, uses the most incredible accumulation of rhetorical images to deliver commonplace ideas, and frankly is only of use as an example of how not to write Latin. Personally, I am grateful that Jordanes shortened and edited his work.

[@MagereHein]

Dutch medieval satirical poem _Van den vos Reynaerde_ was, according to the first line, written by Willem die Madoc maecte (Willem who made _Madoc_ ). We know nothing of Willem and no copy of _Madoc_ is known to exist.

[@williamharris8367]

So, when the Yongle Encyclopedia was created, were all other written sources destroyed, leaving the two copies the only surviving record of the information contained therein? That is the only way that its loss/destruction could have resulted in the complete loss of recorded information. Hyperbole in the extreme! ☹️

[@ajmvoiceover]

How would you like to help a small author's work get read more?

[@klausolekristiansen2960]

How much of that Chinese encyclopedia was truly lost? It contained copies of many works, but do other copies still exist?

[@craigcopland6941]

The library of Alexandria.

[@crazedvole]

When I saw that these books were gone forever, I was wondering if the last copies of these were in Florida. 😏😏😏😏

[@Astyanaz]

Also, Gogol's sequel to Dead Souls.

[@Astyanaz]

Why is it that my computer keeps changing Gogol to Google. Haven't they heard of the writer Gogol.

[@BigSeppiWen]

The burning of the library at Alexandria comes to mind. And whatever works the Albegensians had created before they were exterminated by the catholic church.

[@eldersprig]

time travelers must have stolen the Hemingway papers.

[@deirdre108]

American author Dawn Powell's novels were out of print until Gore Vidal wrote a wonderful essay about her work that was published in the New York Review of Books. The good news is that the essay kindled (rekindled?) interest in Powell and her novels were reprinted. I'm happy to own the two volume hardcover set of her novels published by American Library. I'm particularly sad regarding the loss of so much of the great ancient literature. However I won't shed a tear over lost Hemingway--his novels are so overrated although his short stories can be rather interesting.

[@reaganwiles_art]

Do you draw? Are you a draughtswoman? Is that the implication of your channel name?

[@gy2gy246]

"drawn" as in "attracted to."

[@DrawntoBooks]

Actually yes, I’m hoping to integrate art in some way on this channel! I went to school for design, and used to draw a lot, but I don’t draw traditionally as much now. If I don’t figure out how to integrate it, at least “drawn” has a double meaning, so it still works 😂

[@pouetpouetdaddy5]

talking about lost book...they succeed by technology to 'read" what was written on a papyrus roll who was dig from Herculanuum, town who disappear in the Vesuve volcano explosion of 79 BC ( Pompeii)...It was too fragile before to roll out. They find the papyrus was about Epicurism greek philosophy. They only found two letters explaining this philosophy to this day. Imagine, we could have more information about what really Epicurism was about. Amazing. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pmbUlWhsqNmqbdUsi=pcWyYOCNrEk2lSrw Sorry...in french

[@fredricclack7137]

👂 of "Won", 🚫 2nd!

[@tressonkaru7410]

The problem with this idea, these works aren't "lost". You have links to them in your description. You know what is lost? The last silent film that lon chaney did. London after midnight was lost to a fire. There's no existing copy to this day. There could be a reenactment if anyone wants to recreate what could've been. But, the original is gone forever.

[@DrawntoBooks]

I have a feeling you didn’t watch the video…

[@mr.zafner8295]

Honestly I kind of feel like your rating of the Chinese encyclopedia at 8 out of 10 versus a single work by Homer is a little ethnocentric. Although as I'm writing this it occurs to me that maybe it's because the encyclopedia was only mostly lost, not entirely. But that's just my opinion

[@osphranterrufus]

She kinda looks Chinese though. Is she Greek?

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

The point made by @williamharris8367 upthread is valid.

[@osphranterrufus]

I lost my diary. 11/10.

[@ryanand154]

The worst loss to literature is The Ziggurat’s Pedal.

[@thomasceneri867]

Why speculate on what’s gone when you can celebrate what’s here?

[@milfredcummings717]

🔥🔥🔥Encyclopaedia 🔥Britannica🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥Bible🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@eldersprig]

pretty sure all the UFOology and bigfoot books in the Library of Alexandria are not the stuff you are talking about.

[@bdwon]

Why the fuss? Why not go about creating your own great work of literature? I bet that you can.

[@PEGGLORE]

Library of Alexandria, putting human race back many years. Been commented on by 100 different people. I bring nothing new here.

[@williamhealey1223]

The burning of Alexandria didn't make this list? 👎

[@v1e1r1g1e1]

You know how C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien survived the battles of WWI....? Hundreds of other writers never did. Both sides. Think about that.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

It is not clear that the Margites was any good. What is left does not inspire much confidence as far as I am concerned. But you do not seem aware that Homer was also ascribed a third epic, the Thebaid, written before the Odyssey and Iliad, and regarded by ancient authors who had read it as second only to them. We only have one line of that.

[@NinjaLeekspin]

Funny thing is, we can't prove that William Shakespeare ever existed, either.

[@osphranterrufus]

Nalanda Library in ancient India, destroyed by jihad terrorists.

[@chrisoneill3999]

But if the Library of Alexandria had survived, people wouldn't have had so much time to read the Bible.

[@jbriaz]

Great video. But I do quibble with the general sentiment (not yours, the general sentiment) that Shakespeare is the greatest English writer ever. Most important? Sure. Seminal? Definitely. Most influential? For sure. Best? Hard pass. So many great English writers have come since him that took what he did and improved upon it or went in different directions.

[@champagne.future5248]

It’s hard to compare him to later writers because the English language was in such a fluid state and he invented so many words himself. It’s not the kind of creativity expressed by authors writing at a time when English was more codified and cemented

[@chrisoneill3999]

Shakespeare, the Beatles, Turner and Gaudier-Brzeska are never going to be popular with everybody. They are challenging.

[@Theomite]

I think "Greatest" isn't a measure of quality as much as importance. Cervantes might not be the best Spanish writer but he is most likely the "Greatest" for that reason.

[@ryanand154]

Don’t care, Shakespeare has been replaced by other stupid shit.

[@oliverbrownlow5615]

Shakespeare's lost plays probably don't contain anything that could compete with the eloquence of this statement.

[@fabiopaolobarbieri2286]

AS - thank God - you will be.

[@wlewisiii]

He never wrote it. That BS was to cover his fear of writing.

[@fredricclack7137]

🥱Hummingway! 😴

[@douglasskinner]

This is quasi history. How many works have been placed in the round file by authors themselves never to be seen again? How many would be great authors were killed on the battlefield or in accidents or just diverted to a different life path? We'll never know but is a large number. We like in a fallen world and this is one of its aspects. Better to study real literature.

[@user-hr2nm3wz6q]

First

[@liljoe31]

Cant have global Communism AND lots of books you understand...one or the other