I first heard of Ben Elton in 2000 when he did the lyrics for Andrw Lloyd Webber’s “The Beautiful Game.” The musical was about Irish terrorism and a football (soceer) team, and was planned to hit Broadway in 2002-2003 (talk about your crappy timing). It’s a beautiful score, but I digress.
Anyway, I picked up Elton’s “Blast from the Past” a while back and finally got around to reading it yesterday. OMIGOD! If you like funny, serious well written novels, Ben’s your guy. He’s also one of those multi-talented people who succeed in many fields.
Who else has written a bunch of works but whose name is not famous?
By famous, do you mean someone everybody has heard of (Stephen King) or that they’re well-known only among readers (Stewart O’Nan)?
Some of my favorite writers aren’t particularly well-known but they’ve written at least four or five excellent works, won some awards, and maybe even had something filmed:
Pat Barker
Ron Hansen
Don Robertson (dead, and his books are mostly out of print)
William Gay
Larry Brown
David L. Martin
Harriett Arnow
An author who is not famous on this board, but does have devoted fans of the genre, is an English woman, the late Norah Lofts. She wrote seemingly dozens of historical novels (NOT romances or bodice rippers) about families in England. From the days of the Romans to punk rockers, but mostly the Middle Ages and Victorian times. Fascinating, researched to a fare-thee-well - I spent years pre-internet collecting just about all of her books.