They are forces behind books considered benchmarks for writers around the world. However, did you know that these writers only wrote one book? Let’s take a look at six such literary wonders.
1. Emily Brontë –Wuthering Heights
It is a fact well-known that Brontë the sisters passed away well before their time. Emile Brontë died due to tuberculosis in 1848, a year after he classic, Wuthering Heights, was published. She was 30. The book revolves around Catherine and Heathcliff’s passionate love that spans generations.
2. Margaret Mitchell – Gone With The Wind
Published in 1936, this won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year, and is regarded as one of the best classics of all time. It chronicles the journey of Scarlett O’Hara, a young Southern woman living in the time of the Civil War, and later Reconstruction. Mitchell died in 1949 following an accident.
3. Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
Plath’s The Bell Jar talks about the protagonist’s battle with depression, and finding a purpose and place in the world. This book is considered to be semi-autobiographical as she battled depression herself. Plath died by suicide at 30. It is said that she was working on her second novel, Double Exposure, at the end of her death, but the manuscript has been lost since 1970.
4. Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
Black Beauty is touted to be one of the best-selling children’s books of all time. It takes the readers on the incredible bond forged between the horse and the trouble teenage girl, Jo Green. It follows Black Beauty, and the drastic shift in his life as he goes from living on an idyllic English farm to pulling cabs in London. Sewell passed away only five months after the book was published. She was 58.
5. Oscar Wilde – The Picture Of Dorian Gray
An accomplished playwright and poet, Wilde was the author of only one book — The Picture Of Dorian Gray. It was published in 1890, and was marred by controversies owing to themes of homosexuality. He passed away in November 1900.
6. Arthur Golden – Memoirs of Geisha
As the name suggests, Memoirs of Geisha is about Geisha and her life in mid-10th century Japan. It was published in 1997, and also adapted into a film in 2005 by Steven Spielberg.