By Brian Boone
Uncle John has published 37 editions of the Bathroom Reader (and counting), so he can’t quite relate to these world-famous authors who just wrote one novel — and then never again. Why? They had their reasons.
Anna Sewell — Black Beauty
In 1834, 14-year-old Anna Sewell suffered a fall so severe she broke both her ankles. They never properly healed, and for the rest of her life she walked with a crutch and made use of horses. Her experiences with those animals inspired Black Beauty, written from the point of view of the horse, a major literary innovation at the time. Work began in 1871, by which point Sewell was so ill that she rarely left her bed, and she wrote on strips of paper that her mother assembled into a draft. Six years later, Black Beauty was published to acclaim and success; six months after that, Sewell died at age 58.
J.D. Salinger — The Catcher in the Rye
Salinger was hailed as an astounding new talent upon the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. The novel was told by Holden Caulfield, a bitter, disaffected young man wandering around New York City and profanely pointing out the flaws in modern society and criticizing the various “phonies” he encountered. It would go on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time, earn a spot on school reading lists, and frequently rank on lists of the best American books ever published. But Salinger never wrote another full-length work. He published two short story collections in the 1950s, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey, but otherwise retreated to his New Hampshire home and avoided contact with the public and the press up until his death in 2010.
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Kathryn Stockett — The Help
Up until her early thirties, Stockett worked in various capacities in the publishing industry and the world of marketing. Following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, she decided to put her degree in creative writing, and experiences growing up in Mississippi and Alabama, to major use — she wrote The Help. Taking place in Jackson, Mississippi, during segregation in the mid-20th century, it examines the lives of three Black women who work as maids for wealthy white families and the challenges and tragedies that they endure. Stockett had a bear of a time getting The Help written and published. It took five years to finalize and 60 literary agents said no before Stockett found one. It would ultimately sell 10 million copies and inspire a movie; Stockett has yet to publish a follow-up.
Harper Lee — To Kill a Mockingbird
A titan of American literature, To Kill a Mockingbird is read by virtually everyone in the U.S. school system at some point. A powerful story about the Civil Rights movement, racism, the end of childhood, class, and family, the slim novel about crusading small-town Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch defending a Black man in an unfair trial (while his children take it all in) was published in 1960, when Lee was 34. Lee refused to do much publicity for the book, even as it routinely sold millions of copies and emerged as a classic. The fact that Lee only ever wrote one book (or only ever needed to) was part of the narrative, which added to the shock when a near-death Lee released Go Set a Watchman in 2015. It earned poor reviews, particularly after news emerged that it was little more than an abandoned and wildly different early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird Lee didn’t want the public to see.