Well known authors that were One Hit Wonders

[speedymama]

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?

although Bronte does have a pretty extensive canon of poetry ( pedantic emoticon)!

Ah but were they hits, if you catch my drift?

caught!

am racking my brains to come up with others but I can't!

Carl Sagan only hit was Contact I believe.

Sagan's

according to a biog of Margaret Mitchell I once read, the reason why she didn't write anything subsequently was because she thought she had to answer all her fan letters herself and she got thousands and thousands for the rest of her life.

I really love To Kill a Mockingbird.

Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

also

George & Weedon Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody

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 Margaret Mitchell wrote another novel, but it was unpublished during her life.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.

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.

Monica Ali - Brick Lane

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

Salinger - Catcher in the Rye.

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

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.

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.

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'?

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.

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.

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.

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

Oh, what's the other book like?

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

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

Ken Kesey?

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.