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Original poster

Well known authors that were One Hit Wonders

33 replies

speedymama · 02/07/2007 14:27

The only ones I can think of are

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mocking Bird
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Margaret Mitchell (?) - Gone with the Wind

Any others?

OP posts:
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Quattrocento · 06/07/2007 15:05

Clark Kent - good list, you pedantic thing you

How about this for an obscure spot? It was a bestseller of its time...

Walpole - The Castle of Otranto

NotQuiteCockney · 06/07/2007 15:02

I couldn't stand Lolita, I could see it was well done, but ... ugh. Ada really is beautiful and lovely and lyrical and great. I swear.

Greensleeves · 06/07/2007 14:57

Oh, OK. I read Glory and Pale Fire, both were turgid, rambling and peppered with little snippets of the sort of pointless cruelty Lolita revels in.

I don't think much of Nabokov, can you tell?

NotQuiteCockney · 06/07/2007 14:54

What? Ada was lovely! I couldn't manage to read Lolita (evil, as you say), but Ada is a great great book.

satyricon · 06/07/2007 14:54

Agree with donnie, by the way. Bronte's poetry is still regular university-grade reading. It might not make the best-seller lists these days, but it's important literature.

Greensleeves · 06/07/2007 14:53

Nabokov (did write other books but they were just wank, as opposed to being actually evil like Lolita)

Greensleeves · 06/07/2007 14:53

Thackeray

satyricon · 06/07/2007 14:52

Donna Tartt with "The Secret History". Until she got off her lazy behind and wrote "The Little Friend", anyway.

abra · 04/07/2007 22:48

I remember loving The Neon Bible when I read it years ago and then reading A Confederacy of Dunces later and being a bit disappointed with it.
For one hit wonders Now in November by Josephine Johnson.

anorak · 04/07/2007 10:04

Ken Kesey?

MrsJohnCusack · 04/07/2007 10:02

and Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)
Widely revered in our family as the Only Book That Ever Made My Brother Cry

NotQuiteCockney · 04/07/2007 10:01

(Toole's not Persig's, I only barely managed to read Zen, and didn't like it.)

NotQuiteCockney · 04/07/2007 10:01

Oh, what's the other book like?

MrsJohnCusack · 04/07/2007 10:00

Pasternak - Dr Zhivago (his only novel I think, mostly wrote poetry)

Mercy · 04/07/2007 10:00

Sorry, that was badly worded. Toole had written another book (I think when he was much younger) and which was published years after the first.

Mercy · 04/07/2007 09:58

I know, it's really sad. He did write another book actually, 'The Neon Bible' which was published many years later.

And yes, Pirsig wrote another book too.

NotQuiteCockney · 04/07/2007 09:52

Oh, Persig did write another book, didn't he? Lila? I'm working from memory.

COD is the obvious pick, what with him killing himself before it reached print.

Mercy · 04/07/2007 09:51

wow NQC - I read the thread title and 'Confederacy of Dunces' was the first book that came to mind! Must read it again actually.

How about 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'?

NotQuiteCockney · 04/07/2007 09:46

Um, Salinger wrote a lot of other books, none of which are as popular as Catcher, but all of which are better. (One of which a v popular MN poster is named after!) None of them were published recently, though.

Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is a good example I think. That's all he wrote, and it was very good.

Marina · 04/07/2007 09:42

If we are talking specifically of people who only have one acclaimed novel, then in the UK that might include Lionel Shriver and Keri Hulme...for now.

choosyfloosy · 04/07/2007 09:40

Salinger - Catcher in the Rye.

Or didn't he publish another novel recently that sank without trace? Not sure.

geekgirl · 04/07/2007 09:39

I know she's finally brought another one out btw, but it's supposedly utterly dire

geekgirl · 04/07/2007 09:39

Monica Ali - Brick Lane

Original poster
speedymama · 04/07/2007 09:37

Sagan's only fictional hit was Contact though. Were his non-fictional writing's also hits? Similarly, Margaret Mitchell may have written another book but it was not a hit, especially as it was not published.

OP posts:
clerkKent · 03/07/2007 12:59

Pedant alert Carl Sagan did a lot of non-fiction writing, e.g. companion volume to TV series Cosmos. Margaret Mitchell wrote another novel, but it was unpublished during her life. Stella Gibbons also wrote "Miss Linsey and Pa" (1936), "Nightingale Wood" (1938), "Westwood" (1946), and "Conference at Cold Comfort Farm" (1959).

I thought about Joseph Heller (Catch 22), but he wrote a number of other much less successful novels.

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Jaroslav Hasek - The Good Soldier Schweik
John Cleland - Fanny Hill

but none of these literally wrote nothing else.