Sometimes, an author's life is cut short before they get the chance to write another novel. Others are perfectionists that are never satisfied enough with their writing to put it out into the world again.
From Oscar Wilde to Margaret Mitchell, here are 11 authors that can only be described as literary one-hit wonders.
Emily Brontë died in 1848, just a year after writing her one and only book, "Wuthering Heights."
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The Brontë sisters all met untimely deaths, and Emily was no different. She passed away of tuberculosis at age 30, but not before publishing "Wuthering Heights," a classic piece of English literature about two star-crossed lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff, that spans generations.
Margaret Mitchell only published "Gone with the Wind" during her lifetime.
"Lost Laysen" was found handwritten in two notebooks by the son of one of Mitchell's ex-boyfriends, who discovered it while he was going through his father's correspondence with Mitchell — he had planned on donating the letters to a museum.
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Anna Sewell's only novel, "Black Beauty" was completed just one year before she died.
"Black Beauty" was published when Sewell was 58 years old — not much is known about her career or life before then. Sadly, Sewell died five months after its publication.
Oscar Wilde wrote many plays, short stories, and poems — but only one novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
There's no shortage of words written by Wilde, who became an accomplished playwright and poet during his 46 years. But he only ever published one novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" in in 1890.
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"Dorian Gray," an exploration of morality through the eyes of a vain man, was controversial at the time — and still is — for its homosexual themes. Wilde was eventually convicted for his "crimes" of sodomy and gross indecency in 1895. He died five years later.
Ralph Ellison's only novel to be published in his lifetime was "Invisible Man." He struggled to complete a second.
According to Amazon, the complex, decade-long plot of "Invisible Man" can be summed up as the story of a man "
Sylvia Plath wrote dozens, if not hundreds, of poems, but only published one novel, "The Bell Jar," before committing suicide.
Considered to be semi-autobiographical, the 1963 novel "The Bell Jar" is about a young woman living with depression, and struggling to find her place in the world. The story's end is where real life and fiction tragically differ — while the protagonist of "The Bell Jar" goes to therapy and seeks help for her mental illness, Plath committed suicide at the age of 30.
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JD Salinger wrote multiple novellas and short stories, but "Catcher in the Rye" was his only novel.
Salinger's only novel, "Catcher in the Rye," is about Holden Caulfield, a high school student dealing with depression and growing pains. It was published in 1951 as his first stand-alone work — he had previously had multiple short stories published in magazines and journals.
Salinger, a notorious recluse, never wrote a full-length book again. In 1961, he published "Franny and Zooey," two related novellas, and two years later "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction," another set of novellas.
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For 55 years, Harper Lee's only published novel was American classic, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
"To Kill a Mockingbird," a story about a family in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, dealing with racism, loss of innocence, and classism, is one of the most beloved books in American history, and a literary classic.
Arthur Golden completed "Memoirs of a Geisha" in 1997 and hasn't written anything since.
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"Memoirs of a Geisha" is a historical fiction novel about a geisha living in mid-20th century Japan. It was published in 1997 as Arthur Golden's first and only novel. It was a huge success, and even into a film in 2005.
Kathryn Stockett's debut novel "The Help" remains her only novel, nine years after its publication.
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EL James' status as a one-hit wonder might change — but for now, all she's written are the "Fifty Shades of Grey" books.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" is a phenomenon, so it's not a knock on James to say she's a one-hit wonder — she's written three books in the original series, and two more re-telling them from another character's perspective. "Fifty Shades of Grey" started out as "Twilight" fanfiction, but evolved into a story about the world of BDSM.
While other authors of prolific series, like JK Rowling ("Harry Potter") and Stephenie Meyer ("Twilight"), have stepped away from these series and written other novels, James has stayed in the world of Anastasia and Christian.
So, while she's technically written multiple books, it remains to be seen if she can move past this story.
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