This time around, I am posting NOTES that I cut from my article research and not my actual writing. While my own notes in parentheses are included, the rest of the writing above those notes is not mine. It is from an article on the Greenwich Library website. The article: “Literary One Hit Wonders (Because the Author Only Wrote One Book!)”
It is just one of the sources that I used for my article “One-Hit Wonders: Authors with Only One Novel Published in Their Lifetime” which was published in the February 2026 issue of First Chapter Plus Magazine. You can find my other sources used at the bottom of the article.
Note that the “REASON FOR CUTTING” part under both passages is all my own writing.
FROM THE GREENWICH LIBRARY WEBSITE PAGE CITED ABOVE:
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces (1980). Published posthumously over a decade after Toole's suicide, largely due to the persistence of his mother, the book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. He wrote another novel, The Neon Bible, but neither was published in his lifetime. (NOTE: He wrote two novel-length manuscripts before his death and both were posthumously published.)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Shaffer, Mary Ann
Mary Ann Shaffer took on many literary roles in her short life, bookstore employee, librarian, and finally writer. However, this would be th only novel Shaffer completed before an illness took her life. This historical novel uses correspondence between Juliet Ashton and a Guernsey man to create an interesting plot. Perfect selection for book clubs
(NOTE: The novel was co-written with her niece, Annie Barrows. Barrows took over the editing and rewriting of the book following Mary Ann’s death, per the author’s wishes expressed before she passed away.)
REASON FOR CUTTING:
I changed the article’s slant to focus on one novel published during an author’s lifetime. Since these two books were published posthumously, I could not include them in my article.
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