There is a saying that everyone has a novel in them. The following authors became famous for one novel and have never met the same heights since.
Margaret Mitchell, "Gone With The Wind" (1936)
Mitchell grew up listening to stories of the civil war and had a penchant for reading history books. She wrote Gone with the Wind when she broke her ankle.
Gone with the Wind became the best-selling American novel of all time, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and inspired one of Hollywood's greatest films. To date it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
Kathleen Winsor, "Forever Amber" (1944)
Winsor wrote this epic saga of Restoration England while her husband was away serving in the military. The book was the original “bodice-ripper” and its reputation ensured that it became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly with war-weary British housewives seeking some escape from hardship.
Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man" (1953)
Ellison wrote this pioneering depiction of African-American life in America. He was encouraged to do so by another noted African-American author, Richard Wright.
The main character in "Invisible Man", an African-American living in New York in the 1940s, has no name. It was symbolic of how the black community where, in effect, invisible to white society.
The novel won the National Book Award in 1953 and by the 1960s was hailed as one of the greatest works of American literature.
Grace Metalious, "Peyton Place" (1956)
Metalious was born into poverty in the mill town of Manchester, N.H. She used writing as an escape from the drudgery and hardship around her. At age 30, she began writing her scandalous exposé of a fictitious town called Peyton Place in New England. Despite its reputation as trashy, it sold 60,000 copies in its first 10 days of publication and more than 12 million copies overall.
Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960)
Nelle Harper Lee was the daughter of a local newspaper editor, attorney and political figure.
She found an agent who paid her a year's salary as a Christmas gift so she could take a year off from her job to write. She completed the first draft of "To Kill a Mockingbird" within a year and finished it in 1959. The novel was an overnight best-seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961.
Richard Hooker, "M*A*S*H" (1968)
Hooker was the nom de plume of H. Richard Hornberger. He was an Army surgeon during the Korean War with the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Hawkeye Pierce is based on Hornberger himself and many of the stories in the book are based on actual events.