July 2021: Lost Manuscripts

Lost manuscripts proved to be a challenging topic for the July 2021 meeting, but the collectors met the challenge and pulled from their respective collections books which nearly did not come into print.  "Lost Manuscripts" was an abbreviated subject which more broadly included books which were almost never published because the manuscript may have been lost, forgotten, stolen, misplaced, burned, or otherwise put in jeopardy; fortunately, the manuscript was rediscovered, reclaimed, or rewritten.  The authors and titles ranged from the renowned to the obscure; some of the stories of peril were well known while others were quite unexpected.

Some of the books shown during the meeting fell rather neatly into a single risk category while others faced multiple risks of never being published.  Two of the manuscripts were tucked away and forgotten for some period; they were later rediscovered or reclaimed and ultimately published.  Three manuscripts were either burned—in whole or in part—or at least at imminent risk of being incinerated.  Two manuscripts fell into one of these previous groups, but remain unpublished; for that reason, they received their own category.  Finally—because bibliophiles enjoy books about books—two books formed a fourth category of books about lost books.

Forgotten Manuscripts

The Christian Psalter

Patullo, Margaret.  The Christian Psalter: A New Version of the Psalms of David, Calculated for All Denominations of Christians. Edinburgh: For the Author, 1828.  Margaret Patullo was a life-long Scots Presbyterian who lived in Perth, Scotland.  In her later years she began a practice of daily Bible devotions, which included an in-depth study of the Psalms.  She began composing metrical paraphrases of the Psalms in which she sought to incorporate New Testament theology into the Old Testament songs, hence The Christian Psalter.  Her hope was that her texts would find their way into worship.

Title page of The Christian Psalter

When she completed paraphrasing all 150 psalms in the mid-1820s, she took her manuscript to her minister and asked him to read through them and make suggestions for improvement.  As he read her Psalms, he realized that the poetry was not the best, and rather than confront her with his evaluation, he tucked the manuscript into a desk drawer in his office, hoping the elderly lady would forget about it.  After almost 4 years, she asked him to return her manuscript.  When he handed it to her he said, “I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do to improve this,” meaning she needed to start over to make it acceptable.  She interpreted his criticism to mean her work was so good that even her Presbyterian pastor could not improve it.  Using some of her limited funds, she paid to have enough copies printed to give to her friends and stock the bookstores in Glasgow and Edinburgh.  As her friends began to read her poems, they questioned the quality of the poetry and, fearing a newspaper critic might get a copy and write a scathing review, they bought up every copy and destroyed them in an attempt to prevent her feelings from being hurt.

Psalm 84 from The Christian Psalter

Her Psalter was the first complete Book of Psalms to be composed by a woman, and Margaret went to her grave thinking that she had done an exceptional job of versifying the Psalms—so good that even her minister couldn’t improve them—and that all the printed copies sold out quickly in her native land.  Copies of her Psalter are very difficult to obtain today.

The Tenth Man

Greene, Graham.  The Tenth Man.  Original copy of unpublished manuscript, no date [1944].  Following the success of Paramount Pictures' adaptations of This Gun for Hire (1942) and Ministry of Fear (1944), Graham Greene signed a contract to write a screenplay for MGM Studios.  He wrote out a story he had been considering as early as 1937.  In 1944, he submitted a treatment entitled The Tenth Man.  MGM—most likely, Samuel Marx, the studio's Story Editor—did not like the story, or at least did not see it as a successful film, and decided not to produce it.

First and last pages of Greene's manuscript

The story lay forgotten in the archives of MGM Studios until it was found in 1984, forty years later.  Greene himself had forgotten the story, and upon being informed of the rediscovered manuscript thought, incorrectly, it might have been only a two- or three-page sketch.  It was, in fact, a full 101-page story.  MGM sold the story and serial rights for a substantial sum—and would also receive author's royalties—to Anthony Blond, a British writer who longed to become a publisher.  Blond courteously sent the manuscript to Greene to see if he might want to make any revisions; Greene, surprisingly, liked the story and chose to leave it as originally written.  Blond agreed to publish the book with Greene's regular publishers in part because he was not affiliated with a publishing house of his own.  The book was first published in 1985, less than a year after the story's discovery.

Sample pages showing hand corrections and typing into the margins 

This "original copy" of the MGM manuscript came from Samuel Marx, though its precise history is unknown.  Marx was the Story Editor at MGM under Irving Thalburg in the 1930s, and succeeded Thalburg after his death as a principal producer from the late 1930s to the 1950s, when he left MGM for Desilu Productions.  He oversaw the MGM story department when Greene's story was submitted, but his role in its 1984 rediscovery is uncertain.  This copy, though, was gifted in 1984 from Marx to a friend and colleague, as noted by a subsequent gift inscription dated the same year.

The Tenth Man, signed first edition

Greene, Graham.  The Tenth Man.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.  First edition.  An introduction by the author recalls the story's history along with sketches of two other forgotten film ideas he wrote, "Jim Braddon and the War Criminal" and "Nobody to Blame."   This copy is signed by the author on the first preliminary page.

Burned Manuscripts

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Stevenson, Robert Louis.  Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1980.  Illustrated by Edward A. Wilson.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Weir of Hermiston

Stevenson, Robert Louis.  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Weir of Hermiston.  London: The Folio Society, 2006.  Illustrated by Grahame Baker Smith.

An early story claimed Stevenson's wife burned the first draft manuscript of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde after reading it.  She may have scorched it critically, just not literally; Stevenson did that himself, and the story he originally conceived was reduced to a pile of ash.

Stevenson wrote the tale in 1885 from his seaside residence in Bournemouth, England, while confined to a bed with some form of hemorrhage.  His wife, Fanny, regularly read his drafts and offered written feedback in the margins, and her primary critique of this tale was that Stevenson has "missed the allegory."  She argued the tale was written as a story, not an allegory; the effect of the tale was an allegory of the duality of the two natures of humankind—good and evil—which reside within each of us in a continual struggle for dominance. 

Having reflected on his wife's critique, Stevenson tossed the manuscript onto the fire.  Stevenson's grandson, Lloyd Osbourne (who may or may not have inserted himself into this part of the story), recalled, "Imagine my feelings as we saw those precious pages wrinkling and blackening and turning into flames.”  Stevenson told Fanny he burned the manuscript so he could not be tempted to try to salvage it; burning it forced him to start anew and write the allegorical tale she advocated. 

Stevenson rewrote the tale in less than a week, about the same amount of time he took to write the first draft.  He then spent another six weeks refining the draft after completing the initial revision.  The book was first published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1886.

C. S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile

Reyes, A. T., ed.  C. S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.  This bilingual edition of Virgil's The Aeneid presents the Latin text in parallel with C. S. Lewis's English translation of most of the epic poem.  Lewis began translating The Aeneid in 1935 and worked on it periodically throughout his life.  He delighted in reading his translation to his fellow Inklings, and the epic poem's influence is seen throughout both Lewis's published works and his personal letters.

In 1964, a year after Lewis's death, his brother, Warren, began cleaning out The Kilns, Lewis's home.  Warren sorted through his brother's papers and manuscripts and kept those he thought significant, and instructed Lewis's gardener, Fred Paxford, to burn the remaining papers in a bonfire.  Paxton bought a little time which allowed Walter Hooper, Lewis's former secretary and literary executor, to sort through the papers and salvage anything he considered important; Warren gave Hooper until the end of the day to carry away whatever he wanted.  Hooper claimed what he could, but most of the papers were ultimately destroyed in a bonfire which burned steadily for three days.

Hooper spent the next five decades slowly sorting through and organizing the materials he salvaged.  In the process, he found fragments of Lewis's Aeneid translation in various notebooks.  With the help of A. T. Reyes, a classic languages instructor and visiting scholar at Oxford University's Wolfson College, they pieced together a nearly complete translation.  If Lewis had fully completed his translation, the missing fragments were likely lost in the bonfire.  Lewis's lyrical translation of The Aeneid was first published by Yale University Press in 2019, edited by Reyes along with his introduction, glossary, commentary, and synopses of the missing sections.

The Crows of Pearblossom

Huxley, Aldous.  The Crows of Pearblossom.  New York: Random House, 1967.  The Crows of Pearblossom is the only children's story written by Huxley.  He wrote the story during the Christmas holiday in 1944 as a gift for his five-year-old niece, Olivia.  After Christmas, Olivia gave the manuscript back to her uncle with the request that he illustrate it.  Huxley returned home, where the manuscript lay unillustrated and forgotten until Huxley's home and all its contents—including his papers and manuscripts—were destroyed in the 1961 Bel Air Fire.  Huxley died two years later, in 1963.

Dedication page and history of the story

Fortunately, one copy of Olivia's Christmas present had been penned for her next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Yost, whom Huxley mentions in the story.  Mr. Crow's friend, Old Man Owl, lives in "the tall poplar in Mr. Yost's garden."  At some point, either after the fire or after Huxley's death, the Yosts rediscovered the sole remaining manuscript of the story and returned it to Olivia.  It was first published shortly thereafter by Random House in 1967, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney.

Unpublished Manuscripts

Fairfax's Psalms

Fairfax, Thomas, Lord.  The Psalmes of King David Paraphrased into Verse Which May Be Song According to the Tunes Used in Churches, by the Right Honorable Tho. Lord Fairfax.  Manuscript in the hand of Lord Fairfax, 1669.  Thomas, Lord Fairfax was an unlikely writer of sacred verse, namely paraphrases of the Psalms.  He had served as Commander-in-Chief of the British military forces under King Charles the First and spoke in defense of the King before Parliament when Charles was executed in 1649.  After Oliver Cromwell instituted the Commonwealth, he was named Commander-in-Chief of the Commonwealth military.  He served in this position until he had a disagreement with Cromwell about making an aggressive move on a small town in Scotland, causing him to resign his position and retire to his family’s country estate, where he devoted the rest of his life to writing poems, primarily versions of the Psalms to be sung in worship.

Fairfax's title page, in his own hand

Over the next decade he wrote his poems, which were kept in a manuscript copy later acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.  In his last years, he took his rather messy manuscript and in 1669 completed a fresh manuscript of what he thought were his best works as a bequest to his family.  His refined manuscript, in his own hand, contained only his Psalm versions, but after his death before his family had his papers bound, one of his relatives wrote out his other poems to make the volume complete.  Since Lord Fairfax had written only on the front side of each page, his other poems were written on the verso.

Fairfax's poetry, copied (left) and psalms, in his own hand (right)

This unique volume eventually found its way into a shop in Manchester, England, which specialized in military memorabilia.  It owned the book for a number of years but apparently no one entering the store was interested in religious poetry, and no buyers searching for versions of the Psalms thought to enter a military store to browse!  It was discovered by a friend of the collector who called the collector about the book, negotiated a very fair price, and secured the purchase.

Fairfax's Psalm 23

Lord Fairfax’s poems have never been published, and along with the manuscript held at Oxford, this is the only copy of his works, written in his own hand 2 years before his death in 1671.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer

Bowers, John M.  Tolkien's Lost Chaucer.  London: Oxford University Press, 2019.  Bowers reveals the story of Tolkien's unpublished Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, hidden in the Oxford University Press archives.  Bowers explores Tolkien's annotated proofs and accompanying notes and shows Chaucer's influence on Tolkien's work, especially The Lord of the Rings.

From 1922 to 1928, Tolkien vigorously worked on a commentary on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer for the Clarendon Press.  He wrote about 160 pages of commentary and was still not done with the project, but Clarendon Press wanted only about 20 pages of notes for a student edition.  Tolkien refused to cut any of the material he wrote, and he and the publisher found themselves at an impasse.  By 1951, Tolkien abandoned the project altogether; he boxed up everything he wrote and sent it all to Oxford University Press.  [Clarendon Press was once the name of Oxford University Press, which still uses the Clarendon imprint for select academic publications.]  Tolkien's incomplete Chaucer commentary sat forgotten in the OUP archives until 2012, when John Bowers inquired about it.

Bowers, a scholar of medieval English literature and a specialist in both Chaucer and Tolkien, found an obscure reference in a Tolkien bibliography to a letter to OUP in which he wrote, "I deeply regret the whole affair."  Bowers's sleuthing led him to contact the OUP archivist, who then found the long-forgotten box of materials.  While Tolkien's forgotten work was discovered in 2012, Bowers and OUP did not announce the find until Tolkien's Lost Chaucer was ready for publication in 2019.  Tolkien's commentary itself remains unpublished.

Books About Lost Manuscripts

Nonfiction

The Book of Lost Books

Kelly, Stuart.  The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read.  New York: Viking Press, 2005.  In this collection of 81 short essays, Kelly traces the stories of works of poetry and prose which have been completely lost, authored by some of history's most famous writers.  From the classic philosophers to the modern novelists, many of their works have been destroyed, misplaced, burned, left incomplete (often when the author died), or in some cases were simply never begun.

While most readers assess the history of literature through the books which have survived, Kelly considers the history of the loss of literature.  At age 15, he began compiling a list of lost books.  "From Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, Homer to Hemingway, Dante to Ezra Pound, great writers had written works I could not possess," Kelly laments.  In The Book of Lost Books, he recounts the stories he has collected since his youth.

Fiction

The Shadow of the Wind

Zafón, Carlos Ruiz.  The Shadow of the Wind.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2001.  On a cold morning in 1945, an antiquarian book dealer takes his ten-year-old son, Daniel, to the Cemetery of Lost Books, a library of obscure and forgotten titles long out of print.  Allowed to select one book, Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax.  After reading the mysterious tome, Daniel sets out to find other works by Carax only to discover that someone is seeking out and destroying every copy of every book written by the author.  Daniel may now possess the last Carax book in existence, and a shadowy figure who resembles a character in the book is out to destroy it, too.