1. Wuthering
Heights [wuhth-er-ing]
The only novel by Emily Bronte, the second
eldest of the famous trio of literary
sisters, Wuthering Heights was published a year before Bronte died
at the age of 30. This classic of English literature tells the sad love story
of Heathcliff and Catherine.
2. Black Beauty
Black Beauty was published just months before its author, Anna Sewell, died. In
addition to becoming one of the best-selling books of all time, the book, which
was Sewell’s only novel, became the influential progenitor of the young-adult
genre affectionately called “pony books,” since emulated by Misty of
Chincoteague and the series My Little Pony.
3. Gone
with the Wind [wind]
Margaret Mitchell was a journalist for The
Atlanta Journalwho had experimented with fiction writing in her youth. Her
first published novel Gone with the Wind, which enshrined a
specific view of the antebellum American South into national myth, was a
runaway success. Mitchell did not publish another book in her lifetime, but her
articles and other writings have been collected and published posthumously.
4. Catch-22 [kach-twen-tee-too]
Joseph Heller's Catch-22 chronicles
the double bind of John Yossarian, an Army Air Corps Captain in World War II.
The title has become a common English phrase to describe any inescapable
dilemma. Though Heller wrote another six novels and many screenplays, none of
them gained the widespread notoriety of his debut.
5. Invisible Man
The 1953 National Book Award-winning Invisible
Man was the only Ralph Ellison novel to be published in his lifetime.
Following the success of his first book, Ellison, friend of Richard Wright and other influential black
American writers, continued to write about politics and music for the rest of
his life, as he taught at prestigious universities and worked tirelessly on a
second novel that he never completed.
6. To
Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee, author of this classic American
novel, may be the most well-known literary one-hit wonder. Published in
1960, To Kill a Mockingbird went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in
1961. This slim novel chronicles a sad, inevitable tale of justice in the
American South told through the eyes of six-year-old Scout, the daughter of
distinguished attorney Atticus Finch, since embodied by Gregory Peck in the
1962 film adaptation. Though encouraged by her peers, including Truman Capote,
Lee never published another novel.
John Kennedy Toole wrote his first novel, The
Neon Bible, when he was only 16, but neither this nor his second
novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, was published in his lifetime.
Following his suicide at age 31, his bereaved mother lobbied local professor
and influential Southern writer Walker Percy to read his second work. Finally
published 11 years after his suicide, A Confederacy of Dunces became
a critical and commercial success for which he was posthumously awarded a
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.