History MissingEpisode / Literature

* Creator/JDSalinger made several unpublished short stories before writing ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' and ''Nine Stories'', many of which starred early versions of characters from his other works such as Holden Caulfield and his extended family. If you want to read them, the good news is that they're available at the library at Princeton University...the bad news is that you have to be a qualified University patron, you can't actually check them out, you have to read them in a seperate room with round the clock security, [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill and you're not allowed to bring recording devices or writing implements either]]. Don't worry, they have been scheduled to be published...in 2060, fifty years after his death, as per Salinger's will. Three of them ("Birthday Boy", "Paula", and "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", the latter is notable because parts of it were re-used in ''Catcher'' for the scenes dealing with Holden's dead younger brother Allie) were leaked onto torrent trackers in late 2013, [[note]] Beforehand, there was an extremely small print run of the stories in the late 90's that [[FailedASpotCheck nobody noticed until one of the few copies were sold onto eBay around summer of that year]], the text has been confirmed as authentic by people who read the story at Princeton beforehand but it's unknown if Salinger or his family ever authorized this release [[/note]] but a few others, including one about Holden's mother called "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans" and one called "The Magic Foxhole" that was inspired by Salinger's wartime experiences, are unaccounted for.

* Creator/JTEdson completed a fifth novel of his ''Bunduki'' series, titled ''Amazons of Zillikian'', that was never released due to a dispute with the Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs estate. Fans hold out hope that it will one day be released.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria The Library of Alexandria]]. A particularly scary hypothesis on the destruction of the Library's contents claims that the works of Creator/{{Aristotle}}, Creator/{{Plato}}, Sappho, Alceus and many more were used to heat the baths in the city for months after the Library was ransacked. Luckily (or not) it's more widely accepted that most of the work in the Library was lost simply due to negligence during what was a politically disastrous time.

* In the final years of his life, ''Franchise/StarTrek'' writer and executive producer Michael Piller wrote ''Fade In: The Making of Film/StarTrekInsurrection'', a comprehensive look at the behind-the-scenes process and development of the franchise's ninth feature film. While the book is very thorough and engaging, it also highlighted several elements that contributed to the DorkAge the franchise found itself in during the early 2000's: lots of jockeying between members of the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' cast (notably Creator/BrentSpiner) for increased screen time, the scuttling of several scripts that had the [[WhatCouldHaveBeen potential]] to be much, much better than the final product, and a detailed breakdown of Paramount's policies and correspondence regarding test screenings and film reshoots. The manuscript was unreleased in Piller's lifetime, apparently due to Paramount not agreeing with the content in the book, and it remained lost for many years until a source close to Piller passed it to some of the notable Trek fan sites. Almost immediately, the sites were all forced to remove the manuscript due to a cease-and-desist order from Piller's family, and it once again fell into obscurity. It was finally published by his widow in 2016.

** ''Literature/TheBible'' contains references to books, such as the ''Book of Jasher'' and ''Chronicles of the Kings of Israel''. These are known as lost Jewish texts. Additionally, Books that were written in the New Testament era were either lost or destroyed (with some surviving and being recovered.)
*** Ever since The Gospel Of Thomas was discovered in 1945, speculation has run rampant about a hypothetical "Q Gospel," Q being Quelle, the German word for "source." Legend states this document was used in combination with the Book of Mark to write the books of Matthew and Luke, which scholars call "the two source hypothesis." Any such document has not been found and likely has not been read since the actual writings of the two aforementioned Gospels.

** To give a well known example of lost literature: The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Lyric_Poets Nine Lyric Poets]]. Out of {{Creator/Sappho}}'s poems, the vast majority are simply lost to history (read: out of nine volumes of poetry, exactly ''one'' complete poem has survived). Out of the other eight poets, at least a half fared ''worse'' - fragments are all that remains from their work.
** ''Literature/TheIliad'' and ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' were originally just two of eight poems that made up Literature/TheTrojanCycle telling the story of the Trojan War. The other six, which were not attributed to Creator/{{Homer}}, are all lost. However, it is possible to deduce the contents of the other poems through a number of summaries, excerpts and references in extant works.
*** Said lost works include many of the most widely-known episodes of the whole saga. For example, [[AchillesHeel Achilles' death]] and the building of the TrojanHorse happen after the events of the ''Iliad'', and were recounted in the ''Aethiopis'' and the ''Little Iliad'' respectively. The fall of Troy is the subject of the ''Iliou Persis'' ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Greek for "The Sack of Ilion")]].

* Speaking of Aristotle, many of his works contained diagrams drawn by Aristotle himself. This includes diagrams of animals and their inner workings. However, the preferred method of copying in ancient times was reading the text out to a group of scribes, which leads to many infuriating passages which make reference to the diagrams, and encourage the reader to view the diagram to better understand the concept the text is illustrating.

** ''Literature/TheIliad'' and ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' were originally just two of eight poems that made up the Literature/TrojanCycle telling the story of the Trojan War. The other six, which were not attributed to Creator/{{Homer}}, are all lost. However, it is possible to deduce the contents of the other poems through a number of summaries, excerpts and references in extant works.

* Speaking of Aristotle, many of his works contained diagrams drawn by Aristotle himself. This includes diagrams of animals and their inner workings. However the scribes that copied his work didn't feel the diagrams were worth reproducing, which leads to many infuriating passages which make reference to the diagrams, and encourage the reader to view the diagram to better understand the concept the text is illustrating.

* "Cosmic Corkscrew", the first story Creator/IsaacAsimov submitted (unsuccessfully) for publication, no longer existed by the time Asimov's other early work was collected and published. Wiki/TheOtherWiki has a whole [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Early_Asimov#Lost_stories list]] of early Asimov stories that were never published and so unable to appear in the anthology.

** ''Campaign'', which was originally pitched to BBC Books as a "pure historical" (a story focusing on historical places with no sci-fi elements beyond the time travellers themselves), with the TARDIS crew following Alexander the Great's campaign in Europe and being forced to take roles in history due to accidentally wrecking the timeline - Barbara heading for India to learn, Susan marrying Alexander (playing off the historical Alexander's bride being a Persian princess described as a 'teenager of no more than fifteen years given to dancing and wild flights of fantasy and occultism') and Ian spying on Alexander by becoming his bodyguard [[AdaptationalSexuality and]] [[HoneyTrap lover]]. ExecutiveMeddling insisted that the pitch was out of character and the plot contrived, to which the author justified his character decisions and suggested AnachronicOrder, to which the executives agreed. The book that eventually happened is a {{metafiction}}al MindScrew about various iterations of the TARDIS crew (modelled after non-canonical ''Doctor Who'' works - TV Comics annuals, Target novelisations, even the boardgames in ''The Dalek Book'') trapped in the TARDIS when the universe no longer exists, with the Alexander historical relegated to backstory, and the plot being about the TARDIS crewmembers slowly going mad and [[TheyKilledKennyAgain repeatedly dying in order to 'ascend']] while taking [[IncestIsRelative even]] [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation bigger]] [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption liberties]] with characterisation. This version of the book was rejected outright and eventually self-published as a fanzine.