One-Hit Literary Wonders 

Some authors write a lot of books. Stephen King has published almost 70 books, and that’s not even counting his short stories. Joyce Carol Oates has published almost 60 novels plus plays, short stories, non-fiction, and poetry.

Then there are the equally famous writers at the other extreme. They publish a book that takes the world by storm and then never publish again, or at least never reach the same level of success that they had with their first book.

Why do these one-hit wonders leave their readers clamoring for more? The reasons are as varied as the individual authors. Some, tragically, died young before they had a chance to publish again. Others felt they said everything they wanted to say in their first book and had no need to write again. Writer’s block may have afflicted others. And for some authors, the reason they never wrote another book remains a secret they took with them to the grave.

Let’s take a look at some famous one-hit-wonder authors:

Harper Lee

Harper Lee had enormous success with “To Kill a Mockingbird,” her first published book. It’s impossible to overstate how influential this book was and still remains. It sold over 40 million copies, won the Pulitzer Prize, inspired a movie that won three Academy Awards, and was taught to generations of schoolchildren.

Ms. Lee did not enjoy her fame. She rarely appeared in public. When she did, she said little. Her many fans eventually gave up on her ever writing another book.

And then something strange happened. In 2015, which was 55 years after the publication of “Mockingbird,” Ms. Lee’s publisher announced that it had found an early novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” written by Ms. Lee, that continued the story of the “Mockingbird” characters.

The publisher said that Ms. Lee had originally submitted the manuscript to them in 1957, that it had been lost for all those years, and that it had just turned up when someone was looking through Ms. Lee’s papers.

There was a lot of controversy. Many were horrified to read that Atticus, the hero of “Mockingbird,” was a segregationist in “Watchman,” which was set 20 years after the events of the more well-known novel.

Some were skeptical about the publisher’s story. And, sadly, some of Ms. Lee’s friends questioned whether she was mentally competent to give her approval for publication. But it was published, and a year later, Ms. Lee passed away at age 89.

The book sold well but never touched the country’s heart the way that “Mockingbird” did.

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell’s experiences bear some similarities to Harper Lee’s. “Gone With the Wind” was a huge success, spawned a movie that won multiple Academy Awards, and put the author in a spotlight that she didn’t enjoy. She went a step further than Ms. Lee by requesting that all of her writing, including her original manuscript for “Gone With the Wind,” be destroyed.

“Gone With the Wind” was Ms. Mitchell’s only published novel. No one seems to know exactly why she didn’t write more for her adoring fanbase. Some think she was too busy to write another book because she spent so much time answering reader mail and defending the copyright of “GWTW.”

Other Famous One-Hit Wonders

“Catcher in the Rye” was the only full-length novel published by the reclusive J.D. Salinger.

Emily Brontë, unlike her more prolific sister Charlotte, wrote only one novel, “Wuthering Heights.” Perhaps if she had lived longer, she would have written more, but she died at the age of 30, one year after her novel was published.

The beloved children’s book “Black Beauty” was the only novel published by Anna Sewell, who died when she was 58, only five months after the book’s publication.

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough, and “Dracula” by Bram Stoker were all, surprisingly, one-hit wonders that were either the only novels the authors published or overshadowed their other work.