Campaign for the American Reader: Five novelists who were one-hit wonders

One of five authors who became famous after publishing a single novel and never published another one, as tagged by John Bardinelli at The Barnes & Noble Book Blog:

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Harper Lee always had a strong interest in English literature. During her college years she wrote a number of short stories and eventually secured in agent in 1956. Her very next piece was the original manuscript for To Kill a Mockingbird. It read more like a collection of stories than a unified narrative, so for the next two and a half years she worked with an editor to turn it into the novel we still write book reports about today.

Lee is notoriously reclusive and declines nearly every interview and speech request that comes her way. Many suspect she’s secretly working on another book, which is possibly the least dramatic but most tantalizing conspiracy theory I’ve heard in months. After To Kill a Mockingbird’s release, Lee was reported to have started writing a second book, The Long Goodbye. She eventually shelved it for unknown reasons. Then, Lee started on a non-fiction book about a serial murderer in Alabama, but that, too, was filed away.