One-Novel Authors

[sun surfer]

The thread on prolific authors had me thinking in the opposite directions - what are the best one-novel authors? Off the top of my head, first comes to my mind Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, one of my favourites, and second Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I'm sure I'm forgetting some obvious ones.

Which one-novel authors are your favourites and would you recommend, in any genre?

[Dr. Drib]

Off the top of my head, I can think of these two:


1) J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye)
2) Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

[Mike L]

I think we discussed this a few months ago. I suggested Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird). Can't think of any others off-hand, but no doubt I will.

Edit: A couple more spring to mind: Anna Sewell (Black Beauty). And possibly Boris Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago) - unless he wrote some other novels in Russian that never got translated (but that doesn't seem likely).

Mike

[Dr. Drib]

And one of my favorite novels:



Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)

[jgaiser]

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces (one novel and published posthumously)

[BenG]

I think The Picture of Dorian Grey is the only novel that Oscar Wilde wrote.
And then there's A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

(I should refresh the page before I post. Jerry already posted A Confederacy of Dunces.)

[ccowie]

Edgar Allan Poe only wrote one novel. I've read all his stories, but actually never read the novel entitled The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Edgar Allan Poe only wrote one novel. I've read all his stories, but actually never read the novel entitled The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

Hmm? According to the The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - The New Raven Edition produced by MR user pynch, there seem to actually be two Poe novels, the aforementioned Narrative and The Journal of Julius Rodman.

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Hmm? According to the The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - The New Raven Edition produced by MR user pynch, there seem to actually be two Poe novels, the aforementioned Narrative and The Journal of Julius Rodman.

Very interesting. I just looked this up because I'd never heard of it or didn't remember hearing of it. Wikipedia calls it an "unfinished serial novel" that was published in 1840.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by ccowie

Very interesting. I just looked this up because I'd never heard of it or didn't remember hearing of it. Wikipedia calls it an "unfinished serial novel" that was published in 1840.

Could very well be. The New Raven Edition (which is available in the MR Library) has a note at the end of the story - Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Jan-Jun 1840.

[Rbneader]

Eve Forward. She wrote Villains By Necessity and nothing else AFAIK. It's a pretty good book.

[ccowie]

Another one is Sylvia Plath who wrote The Bell Jar. I reread this book about a year ago after hearing an interesting CBC radio documentary about Plath. I had originally read it in my 20s, but appreciated it much more the second time around.

[issybird]

Zelda Fitzgerald, mostly famous for being Mrs. F. Scott, wrote a pretty good autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz.

[bfisher]

Thucydides "The History of the Peloponnesian War"
Erskine Childers "The Riddle of the Sands" - the first modern espionage thriller

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by bfisher

Thucydides "The History of the Peloponnesian War"

Not a novel.