Lost Laysen is a novella written by Margaret Mitchell in 1916, although it was not published until 1996.
Mitchell, who is best known as the author of Gone with the Wind, was believed to have only written one full book during her lifetime. However, when she was 15, she had written the manuscript to Lost Laysen—a romance set in the South Pacific. She gave the two notebooks containing the handwritten work to a suitor named Henry Love Angel, who kept the manuscript along with a number of letters Mitchell had sent him. Angel died in 1945, but Lost Laysen remained undiscovered until his son found the manuscript while preparing to donate the letters to the Road to Tara Museum.
Lost Laysen was first published in 1996 by the Scribner imprint of Simon & Schuster (ISBN 0684824280). Edited by Debra Freer, the book includes an extensive introduction telling the story of Mitchell and Angel's relationship, complete with photographs and reproductions of some of her letters.
Famous quotes containing the word lost:
“The general feeling was, and for a long time remained, that one had several children in order to keep just a few. As late as the seventeenth century . . . people could not allow themselves to become too attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss. This is the reason for certain remarks which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne’s observation, “I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow.””
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)