Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/literary-secrets-8-famous-authors-who-openly-despised-their-own-most-successful-books/
There’s a quiet irony at the heart of literary fame. The books that make an author’s name are not always the books they wanted to be known for. Some writers watched their most celebrated work rise to cultural immortality while they privately – and sometimes very publicly – wished the whole thing had never happened.
These aren’t cases of false modesty or the usual creative doubt that visits every writer somewhere between draft one and publication day. These are authors who genuinely grew to resent, disown, or despise the very work that made them household names. The reasons vary: creative frustration, moral regret, a suffocating sense of being trapped by a single character, or simply the painful feeling of being misread on a grand scale.
Arthur Conan Doyle and the Detective He Tried to Kill
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted above all to be considered a serious writer, and it was no consolation that he had created the most enduring character of modern literature. Doyle wanted to be a great historical novelist; the world handed him a detective and a deerstalker. He felt that Sherlock Holmes had cheapened his reputation rather than built it.
Doyle once wrote that he believed if he had never touched Holmes, “who has tended to obscure my higher work,” his position in literature would have been more commanding. He successfully killed off Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the…
—-
Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-06-26 06:58:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
—-
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8