Dead Snunk By the Side of the Road.
Alice Walker wrote other things besides The Color Purple.
Yet Rush has had only one Top 40 hit, and that wasn’t it–it was “New World Man.”
And that only made it to something like #22.
Rupert Holmes – Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
-From Wiki
“While Holmes has since had a successful career as a playwright and novelist, and fans feel affection for his other musical works, this song remains his most recognizable trademark”
Stephen Sondheim has had an exraordinary career, yet people outside of theatre buffs may know he wrote West Side Story.
Similarly, Sholem Aleichem is known as “the guy who wrote the Fiddler on the Roof” stories. He wrote a bunch of very hard-biting tories of Jewish culture that were used as the basis for the musical. Not to knock the musical, but the stories have much more depth and are a fantastic read.
O. Henry produced volume upon volume of short stories and was enormously popular in his day, but these days is remembered (if at all) for The Gift of the Magi.
I would think that The Ransom Of Red Chief is as well known as Magi is…
A. A. Milne was a contributing editor to Punch magazine for almost 20 years and a successful playwright with over 25 plays to his credit, yet today is only known for writing the 2 Winnie-the-Pooh books
Never heard of it, and I doubt many others have. 
I have always considered The Ransom Of Red Chief as THE signature O. Henry short story, with a classic example of his trademark surprise ending.
I assume that anyone who knows his writing has read “Red Chief”…
Let almighty Google be the judge…
“Ransom of the Red Chief” gets 7,520 hits
“Gift of the Magi” gets 159,000 hits
Erle Stanley Gardner is known mostly for his Perry Mason novels, but he was a a terrifically prolific writer of other stories as well and published under a variety of pseudonyms, such as A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray and Robert Parr.
Among his other works was a series of books where the DA was the good guy and the lawyer was not. This from Wiki: *"Under the pen name A. A. Fair, he also wrote a series of novels about the private detective firm of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. He also wrote another noteworthy series of novels about District Attorney Doug Selby and his opponent, the rascally Alphonse Baker Carr. This series is interesting in that it is an inversion of the motif of the Perry Mason novels, with prosecutor Selby being portrayed as the courageous and imaginative crime solver and his perennial antagonist A.B. Carr being a wily shyster whose clients are always “as guilty as hell”. *
“The Ransom of Red Chief” gets 246,000 hits.
oopsie
Disagree on Golden Earring, “Twilight Zone” is also well-known and often on the airways in the US. But I don’t know that most people would associate them with the same band. I think most would recognize both songs, but not remember who recorded either.
I know Twilight Zone was them, mainly because the video was one of the first videos I ever saw (my family didn’t have a TV - so after seeing the video at a friend’s house it didn’t get lost in a crowd of other videos). Years later I heard Radar Love and found out it was them. I’ve never even heard of Pictures of Matchstick Men, though.
To go with Shelly & Stoker, Gaston LeRoux. Not remembered for any work but Phantom of the Opera.
WORD!..
was that too square? maybe I should hold an unsquare dance 
From a previous thread…Most (but we do) don’t get or know John Prine.
tsfr
Another shout-out for Rush. I swear around here if you mention “The Body Electric,” “Half The World,” or even their new song “Caravan,” people will look at you like you’re batty. Mention “Tom Sawyer” and people go nuts.
Oh well. Their loss. More Rush goodness for us folks, yes?
Science fiction fans only know Alfred Bester due to two novels: The Stars my Destination and The Demolished Man. He wrote dozens of others in many genres and also worked on comic books.