In the world literary world, there are many famous writers who have dedicated one wonderful work after another to us. Compared with dumas, Hugo, Tolstoy and other prolific writers, some writers' works, although not many, can still enjoy the literary world.
The 3 writers introduced to you today have only published one novel in their lives, but their works can be called classics, and they are the songs of life that exhaust their talents.
Emily Brontë
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights</h1>
The "Brontë Sisters" are rare sister flowers in the world literary world, and Emily Brontë is one of the most unique.
Compared with her two sisters, Emily's talent in poetry is more prominent. She began writing poetry as a teenager and wrote the romantic legendary poem "The Legend of Gondale". Some poetry critics even believe that her poems are "unmatched after Byron".
However, people are familiar with this talented woman because of her only novel, Wuthering Heights.
This work is one of the masterpieces of 19th-century English literature, and its literary charm is no less than that of her sister Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
The male protagonist of the novel, Hickley, is originally a gypsy outcast, who is later adopted by the owner of Wuthering Heights and falls in love with Catherine, the lady of the villa.
However, with the death of her master, the abuse of Catherine's brother, and Catherine's decision to marry the little master of Thrush Hill, Hykley runs away in despair and anger and embarks on a series of revenge plans.
Hickley's intense love and hate is the most intense color of the novel, revealing the most inaccessible force in human nature and having a touching charm. The author also integrates his deep, sincere and noble poetic style into it, making this work enduring.
During Emily's lifetime, the novel did not receive enough attention. Because of her long-term poverty and overwork, Emily died before she was thirty years old. The value of her only novel was re-evaluated behind her, and people will always remember this talented woman.
Margaret Mitchell
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind</h1>
"Gone with the Wind" is perhaps the most familiar American novel, and it has endured for its film adaptation of Gone with the Wind.
This work, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1937, is the only novel by the writer Margaret Mitchell.
Movie based on "Gone with the Wind"
Scarlett, the heroine of the novel, is a charming Southern American woman, wild, romantic and brave. The emotional entanglement between her and Wei Xili and Brad has become a classic love bridge.
And this classic with a grand background and a distinct role is not only the brainchild of Margaret Mitchell, but also the credit of her husband John.
Scarlett played by Vivien Leigh in "Gone with the Wind"
John was Margaret's second husband and a fine editor for the Associated Press. He admired Margaret's talent, did his best to maintain his wife's independence, and helped her find a job as a journalist at the Atlanta News.
Soon, Margaret became one of the few female journalists of her time, and she loved the job so much that she published 129 feature articles and 85 news stories in her four-year career as a journalist.
However, in an interview, she accidentally sprained her ankle, causing permanent damage, and had to leave her love of journalism to return to her family as a housewife.
Like a bird soaring in the blue sky, suddenly put in a cage, Margaret felt very depressed, and could only read one book after another, and the novels in the library were almost read by her.
At this time, John's words changed Margaret's life. John saw through his wife's nowhere to go and said to her, "Instead of reading someone else's book one after another, why don't you write a book yourself?" ”
This sentence seemed to suddenly knock on Margaret's heart. The stories about the Civil War told by her grandmother in her childhood came flooding in her mind...
In this way, Margaret began to create "Gone with the Wind", and John became her biggest supporter.
Margaret with her husband John
Whenever she finished writing a part, John was her first reader and gave her a lot of professional advice. Her husband's encouragement made her keep writing, and this writing was 8 years...
By then, John had become an advertising manager, but he was still busy at work, helping his wife sort out the manuscripts. He said: "I would like to give up everything to embrace my wife's talent. ”
In 1936, Margaret's Gone with the Wind was finally published! The book was immediately popular as soon as it came out, and the memories of the Civil War, the distinct characters such as Scarlett and Brad, the twists and turns of the storyline deeply touched the reader, and the letters flew like snowflakes...
In this way, the fledgling Margaret became a red star in the literary world overnight. With the film "Gone with the Wind" winning nearly ten Oscars, the original author Margaret is even more famous in the world.
Perhaps not because of an accident, Margaret will contribute more works. One night in August 1949, she was haunted by a car accident, as the name of the novel goes: Gone with the wind...
Margaret car accident scene
Although Margaret wrote only one novel in her lifetime, this novel is "America's greatest work", translated into dozens of languages since its publication, and has sold more than 30 million copies.
Proust
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Marcel Proust: Remembrance of a Watery Age</h1>
It is impossible to mention French literature without mentioning "Remembrance of The Age of Water", which is hailed as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
The literary critic André Moroa once commented:
"In the 50 years from 1900 to 1950, there was no other great novel worth remembering except 'Remembrance of the Watery Years.'"
This is a long-form masterpiece with a total of 7 large volumes, delicate spiritual retracement description, grand and complex narrative structure, and in-depth and meticulous stream-of-consciousness techniques, which make it have an unshakable position in the jungle of fiction.
This is also a novel that has devoted the author's life's work.
Proust was weak from an early age and began to suffer from asthma at the age of 10, which gave him a sensitive, introspective personality, and also made him interested in writing, psychology, and philosophy.
After joining the work, Proust began to submit articles to magazines, writing some essays, short stories and other works, but he had not yet written a long novel.
At the beginning of the 20th century, he lost his parents one after another, and his mental illness was severely damaged, which made his asthma worse, and he had to close his family and recuperate. It was during that time that he began to work on the novel "Remembrance of the Watery Years".
For 5 years, he completed the layout while writing, and formulated a blueprint for 7 volumes with a total of 15 volumes.
Proust's manuscript
After repeated rejections and twists and turns, the first volume was finally published in 1913. It took another 6 years for the second volume to be published.
The novel takes "I" as the main body and is a memoir-style novel with a prose style. In addition to the storyline, the novel integrates a meticulous psychological description, and the overlap between reality and the psychological world is like a flow of water, creating a new era of novel writing.
After the publication of the second volume of the novel, Proust won the French Goncourt Literary Prize, and it was only after many years of dormancy that he became a hit.
This gave Proust even greater motivation, and he devoted himself to creation day and night, and the third and fourth volumes were published successively.
However, due to illness and overloaded work, Proust died suddenly in 1922 and could not wait for the publication of the last 3 volumes.
Five years after the author's death, the novel he created was only fully met with readers.
"Remembrance of The Age of Water" ushered in a new era of French literature in the 20th century, and its influence on European literature is immeasurable. And this literary symphony is the author's life song, but also let his life be eternal.