10 Literary One-Hit Wonders (+ Ross and Tom)

Link to March 17, 2009, timesonline article. (via planolibrary tweet)

Here's the main qualification: Luke Leitch looks at those authors for whom one novel proved quite enough. Otherwise, it would be easy to quibble with the inclusion of Salinger, Wilde, and Plath.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
2. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
4. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
6. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
8. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.
9. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
10. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

John Leggett's dual biography (Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies) profiles two other literary one-hit wonders.

In 1948, Ross Lockridge Jr.'s Raintree County was published to great critical acclaim. Lockridge, who suffered from depression, committed suicide shortly thereafter. The book was made into a 1957 movie starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Nigel Patrick, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor and Agnes Moorehead. (What a cast!)

Thomas Heggen adapted his 1946 novel, Mister Roberts, based on his experience in the Navy, for the Broadway stage. He won the 1948 Tony Award in 1948 for Best Author and Best Play. A year later, at the age of 29, he was found dead in his apartment. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be asphyxiation by drowning.