One-Hit Wonders: The Novels

 

Some authors are prolific, writing more books than many people will ever read in a lifetime. Isaac Asimov and Ursula Bloom each wrote over 500 books. But they are not even close to the record.

Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski – 600 books

John Creasey – 600 books

Barbara Cartland – 723 books

Kathleen Mary Lindsay – 904 books

Jacob Neusner – 950 books

Ryoki Inoue - 1075 books

Yes, some people write lots of books. That doesn’t mean they write good books. The authors on the list above might be good writers. I don’t know. I have only heard of a couple of them and have only read Asimov.

In contrast, some authors make an incredible splash with only a single book. In the music industry they have one-hit wonders. That’s not really the same thing because in the case of musical one-hit wonders, it is not because the artist didn’t try to produce more. They often produced many other songs, it’s just that only one caught on. When I am talking about books, it is the author that only produced one novel and then for whatever reason, never wrote another.

Here is a sample:

Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton

Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

A Canticle for Liebowitz – Walter M. Miller Jr.

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

Black Beauty – Anna Sewell

Memiors of an Invisible Man – H. F. Saint

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean Dominique Bauby

Leaving Las Vegas – John O’Brien

Frankenstein -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

The Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Hariet Beecher Stowe

There could be many reasons why an author wrote one important novel and then never wrote another. In the case of Emily Bronte, she died before writing any more. Some, like Oscar Wilde, may have simply been doing too many other things. Wilde wrote plays, poetry, essays, and lectures. For some, their book was so popular they became a celebrity, and the pressures of being a celebrity took up all the energy that would have gone into writing another book. I would imagine that in some cases, producing one monumental work of fiction was all the author had the energy to do. They shot their bolt, and now they were done.

Whatever the reason, some of these single works are astoundingly good and well worth the read. 

Star Liner