# Prolific authors who have faded into obscurity

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prolific-authors-who-have-faded-into-obscurity/705439>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [November 23, 2014, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prolific-authors-who-have-faded-into-obscurity/705439 "2014-11-23T21:48:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 116

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prolific-authors-who-have-faded-into-obscurity/705439/116 "2014-12-07T13:30:33Z")

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When Pearl S. Buck came up when there was [a similar thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12780380) back in 2010 and someone suggested that she was completely forgotten in the UK, I observed:

> [@Huge successes then, completely forgotten now](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/huge-successes-then-completely-forgotten-now/549315/107):
>
> Though here in the UK is surely precisely where Pearl S. Buck is currently going through the once-in-a-generation temporary blip/re-assessment in reputation, courtesy of the new Hilary Spurling biography of her. Duly reviewed in all the broadsheets earlier this year, etc.
> 
> I even saw a London bookshop do a special in-store display of about a dozen of her titles in the last couple of months. Granted it was a branch of [Daunt’s](http://www.dauntbooks.co.uk/) and most of them were imports, though offhand I believe _The Good Earth_ is still in print here (Penguin Modern Classics?).

I may as well take the opportunity to recommend Christopher Fowler’s 2012 book _Invisible Ink_, based on his long-running _Independent on Sunday_ column. The whole idea is to highlight once-famous authors or works that have been forgotten. He doesn’t quite recommend all of them, but it’s a good source of off-beat reading material, as well as a meditation on the vagaries of literary reputations.

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