"Lost" Speeches and Agrapha

[Herndon]

Welcome to this fantastic forum and thanks for your work!

Thanks all for the welcome (and it was my pleasure young sir!)

The most famous of the speeches for which there is no known authentic text is called the Lost Speech.

Ah! Perfect!

There is a collection of Lincoln's speeches, letters, etc. If one goes through the The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln I think you will find numerous instances of speeches that are mentioned in newspapers but without a complete text. Sometimes there is just a summary; sometimes a summary with quotes from the speech included. Also, included are fragments, notes, thoughts, etc. written down by Abraham Lincoln that often were never spoken orally.

The Collected Works that Roger references is online and allows the user to search in several different ways.

This does look exhaustive! I still can't seem to find the original quote on Providence in it though... perhaps the speech is more obscure than I thought?

Matt, if you are looking for a good compilation of Lincoln quotes one book I would recommend is Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln edited by Don Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher. Other books I would recommend are A Treasury of Lincoln Quotations edited by Fred Kerner, Of the People, By the People, For the People and other Quotations from Abraham Lincoln edited by Gabor S. Boritt, and Abe Lincoln Laughing: Humorous Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Abraham Lincoln edited by P.M. Zall.

Just the thing! I'll try to track a copy of one of these down!