7 Famous Novelists … Who Only Published One Novel

By: Paul Anthony Jones

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When it was announced earlier this year that Harper Lee was to release a new novel, Go Set a Watchman, in July 2015, her readers and fans were quite rightly astonished. For fifty-five years, since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, Lee had remained one of the most famous names on a noticeably select list of best-selling authors whose reputation and enduring popularity rested on a single novel.

But with Go Set A Watchman now selling by the million — and dividing critics and readers alike, many of whom still question whether it should have been published at all — who does Lee leave behind her on a list of literary one-hit-wonders?

For any one of a number of reasons, the back catalogues of the seven writers listed here contain just one full-length novel, which — although often standing alongside shorter prose works, as well as works of poetry and drama — remains a single, magnificent work.

Read more here.

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