When I look at some of today’s authors, such as Stephen King, Jim Butcher, etc., it seems logical that their names will be widely-known for generations to come. But fame is fickle.
My grandma loved the Elsie Dinsmore books, by Martha Finley. But not one person in a thousand today could tell you anything about her. There were 28 (!!) books in the Elsie series, plus 7 in the companion Mildred Keith series. Yet Martha Finley has faded from public view.
The same thing happened to her contemporary, “Pansy” (Isabella Macdonald Alden), although some of her books have been reprinted by Christian publishers in recent years.
There’s also G. A. Henty, with a few dozen books to his name, although he is probably not quite as obscure as the others.
Winston Churchill was the most successful American novelist of the turn of the 19th century with multiple best sellers between 1896 and 1917. Now no one has ever heard his name.*
Same for Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, who was the 19th century’s most successful American novelist.
No one remembers Fletcher Knebel, either, even though some of his books were made into famous movies.
99% of all authors are forgotten within 50 years of their death.
*They may know of a British Prime Minister with a similar name who had to come to an agreement with the American to write his work as Winston S. Churchill.
I have seen George Lippard (1822-1854) described as the most popular American author of his day. His novel Quaker City, or, The Monks of Monk Hall has been said to have been the best-selling American book before Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Erle Stanley Gardner was, when he died, the best selling American author in the 20th Century. He wrote both fiction and non-fiction under his own name and a bunch of pseudonyms. If it weren’t for one of his characters, Perry Mason, he would be completely forgotten.
Charles John Ctcliffe Hyne was a prolific and popular author about a hundred years ago, noted for his “Captain Kettle” series of stories and books. These are virtually forgotten today. I myself wouldn’t know about Cutcliffe Hyne, except that he also wrote The Lost Continent, which is arguably the best novel about Atlantis. (It’s not the basis for the George Pal Film, or the Disney film, or any film, for that matter). I only know of the book from its reprinting by Ballantine in the 1970s under the direction of Lin Carter, who was trying to resurrect lost fantasy, and its republication about a decade ago by Bison Books (with a foreword by Harry Turtledove). The book is currently on Project Gutenberg, which I believe reproduces the illustrations (lacking in the reprints). Worth a look.
I’ve never tried to find any of the Captain Kettle books.
Do you know anybody under the age of 60 who has read it? Or over 60 who read it for the first time within the last 30 years? It is as dead as its author.
Wife is a fan of Kathleen Norris, the SIL of Frank Norris, not the current Christian writer. Top selling woman novelist of the first half of the 20th, now almost completely unknown.
I’d like to mention the Elsie Dinsmore books. I read the first one as a kid–so did my sister. We found it dreadfully cloying & rather nasty. (She lived on a plantation Before The War.) I seem to recall some anti-Catholicism, too.
Alas, the books have not been forgotten. The more pious homeschoolers love her.
Of the “older” books, we far preferred Louisa May Alcott’s. Even though most of her juveniles weren’t as good as Little Women.
An audiobook version was released in 2009. The latest English reprint of it is in 2008, the latest foreign edition is 2010.
And wikipedia has a lengthy list of pop-culture references to it, many of which are pretty recent. Plus a biopic of the author in 2000, a radio adaptation in 2005 and a planned (and scraped?) TV series in 2011.
It’s not Harry Potter, obviously, but its well enough known. People are still reading it, people can reference it in sitcoms knowing at least some of the audience will get the joke and it still gets mined for the occasional remake/adaptation. That’s much more than you can say for the other authors mentioned in the thread.
I decided to pick out the best selling novelists the year I was born and was actually surprised at the number that are still well known today (including Hemingway and Salinger). But there also was Thomas B. Costain, Frances Parkinson Keys, Agnes Sligh Turnbull, Frank Yearby, and Howard Spring.
If you go back to 1934, there’s Hervey Allen, Caroline MIller, Stark Young, Margaret Ayer Burns, Phyllis Bottome,* Mary Ellen Chase, and Alice Tisdale Hobart.
*If she were well known, the Minions would have made a joke of that name.