Monday, March 10, 2008

A single, famous book each


Help me out here. Offer up the names of authors who are known for a single work that became famous and who never published another book. Several come to mind.

  • Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, but nothing else that was published. According to Ron Charles there were 50 million copies published. According to Wikipedia Sewell wrote Black Beauty in the last years of her life while confined as an invalid. She died five months after publication, but long enough to see the book succeed.
  • To Kill A Mockingbird was Harper Lee's only novel. She is rumored to have a couple of other things written but not published. The film staring Gregory Peck and adapted by Horton Foote, is a perennial favorite and an Oscar winner for Peck. I use this book as the 'starter' for book discussion groups as it seems easy for most people to relate to and to talk about. The story resonates for nearly everyone for some reason. Lee is also known as the research assistant to Truman Capote during the time he wrote In Cold Blood although he did not credit her for that.

  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell has sales of about 28 million copies and is the only novel published by Mitchell in her lifetime. The book won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for literature and won a record number of Oscars.
Do you know of any other entries in this odd category?

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