what does 'lost' mean anyway?

While the rediscovery of a lost short story of Virginia Woolf has generated some excitement, a previously lost Virginia Woolf notebook has been known for a bit more than a year and has gone more or less unmentioned in the press. The problem with the enthusiasm for the new short story, is that it was never really 'lost'. It had been published in Good Housekeeping in the early 1930's. It had, however, failed to be republished and thus offered an opportunity for some new hype. Nothing wrong with that - just a misuse of the term 'lost'.