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* Creator/MarkTwain waffled between saying that his favorite of his works was ''Literature/HuckleberryFinn'', which has come to be his most respected novel, and ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'', which few have even heard of. At one point, he claimed, "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."
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* Creator/MarkTwain waffled between saying that his favorite of his works was ''Literature/HuckleberryFinn'', which has come to be his most respected novel, and ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'', ''Literature/PersonalRecollectionsOfJoanOfArc'', which few have even heard of. At one point, he claimed, "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."
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* Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez [[https://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/20140417/abci-garcia-marquez-odio-cien-201404172322.html talked about his displeasure]] that he got international fame for writing ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' and his dislike for what many critics consider as the greatest novel in Latin American literature. His dislike for it stems for how it [[ToughActToFollow overshadowed the rest of his work]], for [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible how critics and intellectuals have praised it without understanding it properly]], brought him [[CelebrityIsOverrated unwanted amounts of fame]], and lastly, he considers his other novels to be far superior to it.
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* Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez [[https://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/20140417/abci-garcia-marquez-odio-cien-201404172322.html talked about his displeasure]] that he got international fame for writing ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' and his dislike for what many critics consider as the greatest novel in Latin American literature. His dislike for it stems for how it [[ToughActToFollow overshadowed the rest of his work]], for [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible how critics and intellectuals have praised it without understanding it properly]], properly, brought him [[CelebrityIsOverrated unwanted amounts of fame]], and lastly, he considers his other novels to be far superior to it.
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* Upton Sinclair is best known for ''Literature/TheJungle'' to the extent that most people who don't know any better assume that he's a OneBookAuthor. However, Sinclair was a ''highly'' prolific author, and he considered his most important work to be ''The Brass Check''. Sinclair was, in fact, enormously disappointed with the popularity of ''The Jungle'', due in no small part to believing that it was popular for all the wrong reasons.[[note]]He had intended the book to highlight the plight of the working poor in industrial centers like Chicago; instead the public was focused on the horrific descriptions of the unsanitary conditions in which their meat was processed.[[/note]] ''The Brass Check'' on the other hand was a scathing, impossible-to-misconstrue criticism of American journalism that Sinclair sung the praises of ''in the text of the book itself''. Part of the reason why the book is not nearly as well known was that [[IResembleThatRemark newspapers refused to acknowledge its existence]].
* Russian writer Maxim Gorky's greatest and best-known work is typically considered to be his novel ''Mother''. Gorky himself considered the novel a failure, believing his true magnum opus was the unfinished {{Doorstopper}} ''The Life of Klim Samgin''.
* Russian writer Maxim Gorky's greatest and best-known work is typically considered to be his novel ''Mother''. Gorky himself considered the novel a failure, believing his true magnum opus was the unfinished {{Doorstopper}} ''The Life of Klim Samgin''.
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* Creator/JaneAusten thought ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'', her most popular novel, was "too light and bright and sparkling" and deliberately planned afterward to write something more serious with a little "[[DarkerAndEdgier shade]]." The result was ''Literature/MansfieldPark'', a textbook case of GenreAdultery and her least popular novel.
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* Creator/JaneAusten thought ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'', her most popular novel, was "too light and bright and sparkling" and deliberately planned afterward to write something more serious with a little "[[DarkerAndEdgier shade]]." The result was ''Literature/MansfieldPark'', a textbook case of GenreAdultery CreatorsOddball and her least popular novel.
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* Creator/WilliamShakespeare apparently thought more of ''The Rape of Lucrece'' than ''Theatre/KingLear''. This is largely due to ValuesDissonance; at the time, epic poetry was considered the highest form of literary art; plays, on the other hand, were seen as lowest-common-denominator trivialities. Today, of course, his plays are better known than his (still great) poetry.
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* Creator/WilliamShakespeare apparently thought more of ''The Rape of Lucrece'' UsefulNotes/{{Lucre|tia}}ce'' than ''Theatre/KingLear''. This is largely due to ValuesDissonance; at the time, epic poetry was considered the highest form of literary art; plays, on the other hand, were seen as lowest-common-denominator trivialities. Today, of course, his plays are better known than his (still great) poetry.
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Examples of MagnumOpusDissonance in literature.
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* Turkish science fiction writer and artist C. M. Kosemen is most famous (on the internet, at least) as the writer of ''Literature/AllTomorrows''. However, he has personally claimed that his favorite work is his long-gestating SpeculativeBiology project, ''WebOriginal/{{Snaiad}}''.
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* Turkish science fiction writer and artist C. M. Kosemen is most famous (on the internet, at least) as the writer of ''Literature/AllTomorrows''. However, he has personally claimed that his favorite work is his long-gestating SpeculativeBiology project, ''WebOriginal/{{Snaiad}}''.''Website/{{Snaiad}}''.
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* Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest who was received into the Catholic Church, is best known for ''Come Rack! Come Rope!'', a novel set at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics; and ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'', a dystopian novel about the Antichrist and the end of the world. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis called the latter novel "prophetic". Monsignor Benson himself saw ''The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary'', a historical novel in which the titular Richard is sent by God to deliver a message of dire importance to the king while enduring torment from the king's men, as his personal favorite of his books.
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* Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Creator/RobertHughBenson, an Anglican priest who was received into the Catholic Church, is best known for ''Come Rack! Come Rope!'', a novel set at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics; and ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'', a dystopian novel about the Antichrist and the end of the world. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis called the latter novel "prophetic". Monsignor Benson himself saw ''The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary'', a historical novel in which the titular Richard is sent by God to deliver a message of dire importance to the king while enduring torment from the king's men, as his personal favorite of his books.
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* {{Creator/Goethe}} assumed up to his death, that his works on the colour scale (which had already been discarded) would leave a more lasting impression on the world, than his books.
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* Creator/FranzKafka despised his work so much that, on his deathbed, he asked his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscript and notes. Had Brod not declined his friend's dying wish, Kafka's most famous works like ''Literature/TheTrial'' and ''Literature/TheCastle'' wouldn't be around today. The only one of his works Kafka had anything good to say about in his lifetime, meanwhile, was ''Literature/TheVerdict'', a short story which is now either dismissed as a piece of juvenalia or forgotten entirely.
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* Creator/FranzKafka despised his work so much that, on his deathbed, he asked his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscript and notes. Had Brod not declined his friend's dying wish, Kafka's most famous works like ''Literature/TheTrial'' ''Film/TheTrial'' and ''Literature/TheCastle'' wouldn't be around today. The only one of his works Kafka had anything good to say about in his lifetime, meanwhile, was ''Literature/TheVerdict'', a short story which is now either dismissed as a piece of juvenalia or forgotten entirely.
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* Reki Kawahara's light novel series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' was originally a one-volume stand-alone story written for a literary competition in 2002 that he didn't even submit it to. It was instead put on the web, and only after gaining popularity, did he decide to start writing follow on volumes. SAO eventually got so big it was published to paperback in 2009 and is now eleven volumes and still going, with a Manga, Anime, and Video Game adaptation plus a huge fanbase.
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* Reki Kawahara's light novel series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'' was originally a one-volume stand-alone story written for a literary competition in 2002 that he didn't even submit it to. It was instead put on the web, and only after gaining popularity, did he decide to start writing follow on volumes. SAO eventually got so big it was published to paperback in 2009 and is now eleven volumes and still going, with a Manga, Anime, and Video Game adaptation plus a huge fanbase.
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* 19th-century British Romantic poets such as Creator/LordByron, Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/PercyShelley, and their peers were obsessed with reviving English verse drama and kept churning out faux-Shakespearean plays that seldom rose above mediocre. In time, many of them thought that this failure invalidated {{Romanticism}}. When worrying over how posterity would judge them, they never thought their lyric poetry could count for much.
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* 19th-century British Romantic poets such as Creator/LordByron, Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/PercyShelley, Creator/PercyByssheShelley, and their peers were obsessed with reviving English verse drama and kept churning out faux-Shakespearean plays that seldom rose above mediocre. In time, many of them thought that this failure invalidated {{Romanticism}}. When worrying over how posterity would judge them, they never thought their lyric poetry could count for much.
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* Matsuo Bashō was a Japanese poet from the 1600s who is considered to be one of the masters of {{haiku}}, then called "hokku"[[note]]Hokku (発句, lit. "starting verse") is the opening stanza for renga and renku, both forms of collaborative linked verse poetry. When Bashō came around, the hokku began to appear as a self-contained poem, and it was then renamed "haiku" by the 19th-century Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki[[/note]]. Regarding this, Bashō himself said: "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."
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* Matsuo Bashō Creator/MatsuoBasho was a Japanese poet from the 1600s who is considered to be one of the masters of {{haiku}}, then called "hokku"[[note]]Hokku (発句, lit. "starting verse") is the opening stanza for renga and renku, both forms of collaborative linked verse poetry. When Bashō came around, the hokku began to appear as a self-contained poem, and it was then renamed "haiku" by the 19th-century Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki[[/note]]. Regarding this, Bashō himself said: "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."
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* Creator/KirBulychev was rather disdainful of his ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'' franchise (he even admitted to never rereading the books after publication, and ''boy'', it [[ContinuitySnarl shows]]) and loved the stories of ''Literature/GreatGusliar''. However, Alice quickly became one of the best-loved characters of Russian children's literature, while Bulychev complained that the editors begged him for something "non-gusliarish"; and even now, while well-known enough, the Gusliar stories are nowhere near as ingrained in popular culture as the ones about Alice.
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* ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'':
** Creator/JRRTolkien wrote ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' merely in accordance with popular demand for a sequel to ''Literature/TheHobbit'' - his true labor of love was ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', which he spent essentially his entire adult life writing and which he was still polishing and rewriting when he died. In fact, he initially advanced the ''The Silmarillion'' for publishing instead and only wrote ''The Lord of the Rings'' when he was told his Elvish History would not ever be published.
** ''Literature/TheHobbit'' was written as a story for Tolkien's children, therefore he tried to make it good enough that his children would enjoy it. Meanwhile, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was written as commissioned by Tolkien's agent as a followup. Despite this, the latter is more well-known and more often referenced.
** On top of this, there is also the fact that Tolkien was a well-respected professor of philology at Oxford, and while he can hardly be counted as a prolific academic writer, he did write a number of very influential academic works. These include definitive Modern English translations of ''Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'', along with a very spirited defense of the literary value of Anglo-Saxon poetry and a dictionary of Middle English, each of which could be considered a ''magnum opus''.
* ''Literature/EndersGame'' was originally just another short story that Creator/OrsonScottCard wrote to pay the bills. He only expanded it into a novel so that it could serve as an introduction to ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' (the story that he ''really'' wanted to tell); [[http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2013-04-04.shtml he feels his best work is]] his short story ''[[http://janlowman.escuelacampoalegre.wikispaces.net/file/view/Card,+Unaccompanied+Sonata.pdf Unaccompanied Sonata]]''. While these are certainly well-regarded among those who have read them, ''Ender's Game'' has become one of the most widely read sci-fi novels of all time, is required reading in many middle schools, and [[Film/EndersGame received a film adaptation]].
* Creator/RobertLouisStevenson only wrote ''Literature/TheBlackArrow'' for a quick buck while he penned ''Literature/PrinceOtto'', which he considered a superior work. However, ''The Black Arrow'' ended up being much more popular and his third best known work, whereas ''Prince Otto'' became forgotten.
* ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' is Creator/WilliamGibson's most famous and acclaimed work because it invented the {{Cyberpunk}} genre and featured commentary on the information age decades ahead of its time. But in terms of actual literary merit, Gibson considers it one of his weakest works (though it ''was'' his first novel). Compared to his later novels, its characterization is minimal, and the plot is very straightforward.
* ''Literature/LittleWomen'' for Louisa May Alcott. She cobbled together a few stories based on herself and her sisters, and it was a rip-roaring success. She made the same thing happen to Jo in its final sequel ''Jo's Boys''.
* Creator/JaneAusten thought ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'', her most popular novel, was "too light and bright and sparkling" and deliberately planned afterward to write something more serious with a little "[[DarkerAndEdgier shade]]." The result was ''Literature/MansfieldPark'', a textbook case of GenreAdultery and her least popular novel.
* Creator/MarkTwain waffled between saying that his favorite of his works was ''Literature/HuckleberryFinn'', which has come to be his most respected novel, and ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'', which few have even heard of. At one point, he claimed, "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."
* Creator/LewisCarroll greatly preferred ''Literature/SylvieAndBruno'' to his ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' books.
* Creator/CharlesDickens wrote enough other highly acclaimed and popular books that he only presents a borderline example, but ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' follows the mold: he wrote it in a hurry for the money and it continues to be one of the best known and [[YetAnotherChristmasCarol most imitated]] of his works. However, of his own works, his favourite was reportedly the novel ''Martin Chuzzlewit'', which hardly has the universal acclaim or influence of, say, ''Literature/OliverTwist'', ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'', ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'', ''Literature/GreatExpectations'' or the aforementioned ''Christmas Carol''.
* Robert Asprin started work on ''Another Fine Myth'' for laughs, merely to give himself a break from the grimness of another book he was writing, ''The Cold Cash War''. Nowadays, he is fondly remembered for the Literature/MythAdventures series, while ''Cold Cash War'' gathers dust alongside other ur-{{cyberpunk}} {{dystopia}}n sci-fi.
* Creator/WilliamShakespeare apparently thought more of ''The Rape of Lucrece'' than ''Theatre/KingLear''. This is largely due to ValuesDissonance; at the time, epic poetry was considered the highest form of literary art; plays, on the other hand, were seen as lowest-common-denominator trivialities. Today, of course, his plays are better known than his (still great) poetry.
* 19th-century British Romantic poets such as Creator/LordByron, Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/PercyShelley, and their peers were obsessed with reviving English verse drama and kept churning out faux-Shakespearean plays that seldom rose above mediocre. In time, many of them thought that this failure invalidated {{Romanticism}}. When worrying over how posterity would judge them, they never thought their lyric poetry could count for much.
* Creator/DavidWeber is famous for his ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books, while his ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'' books are being considered the critically preferred work. But it's ''Literature/TheWarGods'' that's his favorite, and he's described what he's written as far as ''Literature/TheHobbit'' in that series to the ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', and states that work will be the one that lasts.
* Creator/StephenKing:
** When most people think of him, they think of ''Literature/TheShining''. And while ''The Shining'' was indeed a very personal work to King (it being an analogy for King's own alcoholism) he has gone on record stating that he feels ''Literature/PetSematary'' was the scariest novel he ever wrote.
** Most people only know ''Literature/TheShining'' because of [[Film/TheShining the film]], not the book (''It'' would fall into a similar category). King himself would consider ''Literature/TheDarkTower'' to be his MagnumOpus, a truly huge, multi-volume work that took him ''years'' to write (and he notably made a point to finish after he nearly died). However, most literary critics, King fans, and even King himself in the forewords of some of his books, would hold ''Literature/TheStand'' to be his single best work.
* Creator/HPLovecraft:
** Lovecraft considered ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu'' to be one of his weaker stories. Although many of his actual readers agree, Cthulhu is by far his most well-known creation.
** Both Lovecraft and his later readers hold the highest esteem for ''Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace'', considered to be the quintessential CosmicHorrorStory.
** This arguably applies to the whole of Lovecraft's work: While he's considered to be one of the greatest American horror writers, he considered himself to be mediocre at best. (He was an AscendedFanboy of Robert W. Chambers.) For example, he had ''this'' to say about his writing:
---> "I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales, and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors - Poe, Arthur Machen, Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, and Montague Rhodes James. The only thing I can say in favor of my work is its sincerity."
* At different times in their careers, both the poet Creator/TSEliot and the author Creator/HenryJames thought their real destiny lay in writing for the theatre. Unfortunately, James was not a particularly good dramatist, and while Eliot did write some well-known plays (such as ''Murder in the Cathedral''), none have reached the fame of ''Literature/TheWasteLand'' or "Prufrock".
* Creator/AnthonyBurgess resents that he's best known for ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'', which he thought shallow compared to his other works. ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(novel)#Writer.27s_appraisal He dismissed it as "a novel I am prepared to repudiate... a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks."]])
* Creator/HarlanEllison expresses his frustration in one of his audiobooks over the fact that ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'', a story he banged out in a day, is so popular and has been reprinted many, many times; whereas "Grail", a story he slaved over for weeks, revising it several times, and in his opinion one of his best, had never been reprinted.
* While Mario Puzo is known for his novel ''Literature/TheGodfather'', which was a smash hit in the 1970s and turned into an [[Film/TheGodfather even more popular film]], Puzo always considered his earlier novel ''Literature/TheFortunatePilgrim'' to be his best. It's perhaps fitting that people generally remember the original ''The Godfather'' book as a fairly pulpy story compared to its adaptation.
* Creator/ErnestHemingway regarded the critically lambasted ''Across the River and Into the Trees'' as his greatest work.
* Cecil Day-Lewis (Creator/{{Daniel|DayLewis}}'s father) was Poet Laureate in the UK and wrote a lot of serious poetry and verse drama, but he also wrote detective novels to pay the bills. Particularly in the 50s and 60s he was far better known for the detective books (written under the name Nicholas Blake), some of which were adapted for film and TV. His poetry was never the equal of contemporaries like Auden or Larkin and is now largely forgotten, but his detective novels are still regarded as classics by some.
* Creator/PhilipLarkin, meanwhile, wanted to be a novelist rather than a poet. His two novels are read only by a few academics, but his poetry remains popular, acclaimed, and widely quoted.
* Creator/CharlesPerrault published writings and essays about art that were mostly forgotten centuries later. But the work he is still most famous for, his {{Fairy Tale}}s, are still popular today and indeed do much to define those that are in the SmallReferencePools. Ironically enough, Perrault felt ashamed about these childish stories and published them under his son's name.
* Same holds for the Creator/BrothersGrimm, who considered their work on historical linguistics their greatest achievement. Although linguists still use it (Grimm's Law, a sound change that occurred in Proto-Indo-European that moved towards Proto-Germanic) and respect them as early forayers into modern linguistics, everyone else remembers their {{Fairy Tale}}s.
* Creator/ThomasHardy's relationship with this phenomenon was twofold:
** Hardy always wanted to be a poet and believed that poetry had a "supreme place in literature". However, he wrote novels because [[MoneyDearBoy it was more lucrative, and he wouldn't earn a living if he started as a poet]]. With the success of ''Literature/TessOfTheDUrbervilles'' and ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'', he returned to writing poetry for the rest of his life. Most people tend to know Hardy as a novelist than as a poet, though.
** Regarding his career as a novelist, Hardy considered ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'' his favorite and best novel, but it was harshly received at the time. At least one reviewer called it "Jude the Obscene", and Hardy himself claimed that the Anglican bishop William Walsham How burned his own copy. Subsequent scholars (and readers) [[VindicatedByHistory have taken Hardy's side]].
* Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs considered ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' stories to be his best works. They are obscure compared to his other series, ''Literature/{{Tarzan}}''. One need only look at Burroughs's Hollywood legacy. ''Tarzan'' has been adapted countless times since the days of silent movies, and has been an enormously successful property, while the film adaptation of ''John Carter'' spent ''81 years'' in DevelopmentHell, was completed by Disney in 2012 and promptly bombed in a spectacular way.
* Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov wrote dozens of poems, plenty of stories, and considered them to be much better than some fairy-tale poem he wrote in simpleton language when he was young. Except that today, the poems and stories are all but forgotten, while ''The Little Humpbacked Horse'' earned him a statue for ''composing a folk tale''.
* John Buchan is most remembered for codifying the Spy Genre with ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'', but the novel he considered his best was the historical romance/fantasy novel, ''Witch Wood''.
* Creator/MiguelDeCervantes's ''Literature/DonQuixote''. At the 1600s in Spain, money was found in theater, and glory was found in poetry. Miguel de Cervantes wrote a comedy book that didn't get noticed by critics. Nonetheless, it was successful enough for the editor kept asking for a continuation. But Cervantes had AttentionDeficitCreatorDisorder and wanted to write a lot of projects that would bring him glory, like "Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda". [[ComedyGhetto No one took the comedy book seriously, not even Cervantes.]] Maybe that continuation would have never seen the light of day if not for a {{fanfiction}} writer that wrote himself the second part, doing the worst insult you can do to an author: A FixFic, because Cervantes wrote some characters deserving of a better writer. Cervantes [[EvenBetterSequel decided to write the best second part he could]], and so we have now the second part of ''Don Quixote''.
* Doctor Creator/ArthurConanDoyle created a detective character based on an old medical professor whose techniques and insight had always impressed him to pay the bills while he worked on the historical epics he loved so much and which he was sure would make his name and reputation as a writer and artist. Unfortunately for Conan Doyle, the detective character was ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'', who became one of the most iconic characters of all time, while Doyle's historical dramas, which he much preferred, are largely forgotten. Doyle [[CreatorBacklash was not happy about this]] (he even tried killing Holmes off at one point, but fan backlash forced him to do an about-face).
* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/Nightfall1941": "Nightfall" was, to Creator/IsaacAsimov, just another story, though it regularly appears at the top of lists of the best SF story ever. It especially irked him because he wrote it when he was 21 and was [[CreatorBacklash somewhat offended]] by the implication that, in fifty years and hundreds and hundreds of works, he never did anything better. His own favorite was "Literature/TheLastQuestion".
** Asimov also recalls that he thought ''Literature/{{Strikebreaker}}'' would be a social commentary bomb. It remained instead a relatively obscure short story, and he has explicitly contrasted it with ''Nightfall''.
* Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters'' and his ''[[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia Narnia]]'' series sold phenomenally, by his standards, but his own favorite was ''Literature/TillWeHaveFaces''. Then, his big problem with Screwtape was that it, alone among his works, was actively unpleasant to write. Another one of Lewis' favorite books that he wrote is ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'', which he once said was worth ten 'Screwtapes'.
* Matsuo Bashō was a Japanese poet from the 1600s who is considered to be one of the masters of {{haiku}}, then called "hokku"[[note]]Hokku (発句, lit. "starting verse") is the opening stanza for renga and renku, both forms of collaborative linked verse poetry. When Bashō came around, the hokku began to appear as a self-contained poem, and it was then renamed "haiku" by the 19th-century Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki[[/note]]. Regarding this, Bashō himself said: "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."
* Reki Kawahara's light novel series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' was originally a one-volume stand-alone story written for a literary competition in 2002 that he didn't even submit it to. It was instead put on the web, and only after gaining popularity, did he decide to start writing follow on volumes. SAO eventually got so big it was published to paperback in 2009 and is now eleven volumes and still going, with a Manga, Anime, and Video Game adaptation plus a huge fanbase.
* Neil Munro considered himself an author of historical novels, his ''Para Handy'' stories being something he wrote to pay the bills. A hundred years later, the ''Para Handy'' stories are still well-loved Scottish literature and have been adapted several times. Fans might also be familiar with his other humorous stories, ''Erchie, My Droll Friend'' and ''Jimmy Swan.'' The historical novels are mostly known as "that thing Munro did that wasn't as good as ''Para Handy''."
* Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest who was received into the Catholic Church, is best known for ''Come Rack! Come Rope!'', a novel set at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics; and ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'', a dystopian novel about the Antichrist and the end of the world. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis called the latter novel "prophetic". Monsignor Benson himself saw ''The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary'', a historical novel in which the titular Richard is sent by God to deliver a message of dire importance to the king while enduring torment from the king's men, as his personal favorite of his books.
* Creator/JDSalinger, in a very, ''very'' rare interview, said that ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' was a mistake, and the bulk of his writing since then has been about the [[Literature/FrannyAndZooey Glass family,]] as well as [[AuthorTract nonfiction]] about Vedāntic Hinduism.
* Creator/KAApplegate enlisted Ghost Writers to help her complete ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' so that she could instead give ''Literature/{{Everworld}}'' her full undivided attention. Everworld became a rather obscure book series, while Animorphs was, for a time, the most popular children's book series in America.
* Creator/GeneWolfe is best known for TheEpic MindScrew ''Literature/TheBookOfTheNewSun.'' The author himself considers it overrated, and his own favorite is the later FantasticRomance ''There Are Doors.''
* Creator/RobertRankin's novel ''The Fandom of the Operator'' actually revolves around this trope. The villain turns out to be a deceased author suffering from Magnum Opus dissonance, driven mad by a botched attempt to raise him from the dead to continue writing the detective novels that he always considered vastly inferior to his beloved but much less popular space operas.
* Creator/HermanMelville had a very strange relationship with this phenomenon:
** During his own lifetime, Melville was really only respected for his first two books, ''Typee'' and ''Omoo'', [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory quasi-biographical]] adventure stories based on his own experience in the South Pacific. These two works are now only taught in dedicated Melville classes, and towards the end of his career, with no knowledge of ''Literature/MobyDick'' coming down the road, he expressed regret that he would be forever known as "the man who lived among the cannibals."
** Melville's first serious attempt at great fiction was ''Mardi'', a WackyWaysideTribe-laden adventure story bogged down with snarling [[ContemplateOurNavels philosophical tangents]], a protagonist who up and disappears for two-thirds of the novel, and an open ending. Despite all this, he called ''Mardi'' his "child of many prayers" and hoped it would blow audiences away. It was blasted by critics for all of this and for being quite different from his first two novels; modern scholars often consider it the only outright '''bad''' thing he wrote.
** ''Literature/MobyDick'' is, of course, Melville's most famous novel, and as with ''Mardi'' he set out intentionally to write a magnificent work - calling it this time a "mighty book on a mighty theme." While ''Moby-Dick'' is now one of the fixtures in the canon, it was very poorly received and called blasphemous by the press of the day. Though Melville anticipated the controversy, he told Nathaniel Hawthorne in a letter that he had written "a very evil book". On top of that, Melville actually ''thought he could write an even better novel'', and only gave up that notion after ''Moby-Dick'' failed. Though the books after that, ''Pierre; or the Ambiguities'', ''The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade'' and his posthumous work, ''Billy Budd'' are regarded among his best writings today.
* Creator/VCAndrews is most known for her gothic, incest-laden family sagas like ''Literature/FlowersInTheAttic'', but she was particularly proud of ''Gods of Green Mountain'' [[http://www.completevca.com/GodsGreenMountainLetter.pdf according to her brothers]]. Never heard of it? That's because it was published years after her death and is only available in eBook format. It's also notable that this was the only ''science fiction'' novel to ever be published under her name.
* John Gardner considered ''Literature/TheManFromBarbarossa'', his eleventh ''Literature/JamesBond'' book, to be his best in the series. Critics and some of the readers hold it as one of his weakest and think of his earlier stories in higher regard.
* Creator/GeorgetteHeyer wanted to be taken seriously as a historical novelist and expended much effort and research on works such as ''My Lord John'' (a novel set in the Middle Ages, left unfinished at her death), considering her sparkling and enduringly popular Regency romances to be fluffy potboilers. Readers almost unanimously agree it's in the Regency-set fiction that she displays her true genius.
* "September 1, 1939" is one of the most famous poems by Creator/WHAuden; however he came to dislike it, and decades later, he only allowed it to be reprinted in an anthology with a note saying that he considers it to be "trash which he is ashamed to have written."
* The best-known work of Creator/ShelSilverstein was his children's book ''Literature/TheGivingTree''. However, Silverstein openly confessed during his life that ''The Giving Tree'' was not his favorite of his books.
* Creator/DorothyLSayers remains best known for her mystery novels starring AmateurSleuth Literature/LordPeterWimsey, but she personally thought her best work was a translation of Literature/TheDivineComedy.
* Creator/AlfredBester thought ''Golem[[superscript:100]]'' was his best work. Most of those who've read it consider it to be one of his worst.
* Zigzagged by the ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' series. Jeff Kinney, the author, has said that his favorite book of the series is ''The Long Haul'', which many fans consider the beginning of the series's {{Sequelitis}}. However, the installment Kinney is proudest of is the very well-received first book.
* Creator/LFrankBaum will always be best known for ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', but afterwards he was roped into making it a series. By the fourth and fifth books, his introductions become pleas to his fans to allow him to write anything else. After the sixth book, he finally tried to quit and began a new series that he considered his best work. After two books, ''Literature/TheSeaFairies'' and ''Literature/SkyIsland'', it became clear that the series was a flop, and with his mounting financial troubles, Baum would have to return to the Oz series to pay the bills. He would work on the series until his death. As an aside, his favorite Oz book was ''Literature/TheScarecrowOfOz'', perhaps because it includes the main characters from his other failed series and almost acts as a suitable conclusion to the series. It is rarely cited as a favorite among fans, tellingly.
* ZigZagged by Creator/DrSeuss. He considered ''Literature/TheLorax'' to be the best book he ever wrote, but general audiences found the book to be too {{anvilicious}}. However, it has since been VindicatedByHistory.
* Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez [[https://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/20140417/abci-garcia-marquez-odio-cien-201404172322.html talked about his displeasure]] that he got international fame for writing ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' and his dislike for what many critics consider as the greatest novel in Latin American literature. His dislike for it stems for how it [[ToughActToFollow overshadowed the rest of his work]], for [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible how critics and intellectuals have praised it without understanding it properly]], brought him [[CelebrityIsOverrated unwanted amounts of fame]], and lastly, he considers his other novels to be far superior to it.
* William March considered his 1954 novel ''Literature/TheBadSeed'' to be thoroughly mediocre, though it is his most well-known and praised novel today.
* Creator/BeatrixPotter's favorites of her own books were ''Literature/TheTailorOfGloucester'' and ''Literature/TheTaleOfThePieAndThePattyPan'', but her most popular book by far is [[FirstInstallmentWins her first one]], ''Literature/TheTaleOfPeterRabbit.''
* Creator/FranzKafka despised his work so much that, on his deathbed, he asked his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscript and notes. Had Brod not declined his friend's dying wish, Kafka's most famous works like ''Literature/TheTrial'' and ''Literature/TheCastle'' wouldn't be around today. The only one of his works Kafka had anything good to say about in his lifetime, meanwhile, was ''Literature/TheVerdict'', a short story which is now either dismissed as a piece of juvenalia or forgotten entirely.
** Asking Brod to destroy his manuscripts and notes is an interesting story. Kafka mentioned several times before his death that he intended to ask Brod to do so, and Brod always told him that he wouldn't do it, as he respected Kafka's work and disagreed with Kafka's desire to have it destroyed. He even believed Kafka really didn't want his works destroyed, because if he did, he would have either done it himself or asked someone else to do it.
* Turkish science fiction writer and artist C. M. Kosemen is most famous (on the internet, at least) as the writer of ''Literature/AllTomorrows''. However, he has personally claimed that his favorite work is his long-gestating SpeculativeBiology project, ''WebOriginal/{{Snaiad}}''.
* [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] with Creator/AgathaChristie, as both her main characters are successful and well-loved by the public. However, Poirot is slightly more well-remembered and ingrained in popular culture, whereas Miss Marple was Christie's own favourite of the two.
* Clement Moore, a 19th-Century writer and theologian, considered his American-Hebrew Dictionary to be his greatest achievement. What he is most known for, however, is a small poem he wrote for his young children called ''Literature/TwasTheNightBeforeChristmas''.
* Henry De Vere Stacpoole considered his most famous work, the 1908 novel ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon'' to be an inferior work. He called his later novel ''The Man Who Lost Himself'' (1918) his masterpiece. He also disliked the ''Blue Lagoon'' sequels, which he did mainly to [[MoneyDearBoy pay the bills]].
----
** Creator/JRRTolkien wrote ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' merely in accordance with popular demand for a sequel to ''Literature/TheHobbit'' - his true labor of love was ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', which he spent essentially his entire adult life writing and which he was still polishing and rewriting when he died. In fact, he initially advanced the ''The Silmarillion'' for publishing instead and only wrote ''The Lord of the Rings'' when he was told his Elvish History would not ever be published.
** ''Literature/TheHobbit'' was written as a story for Tolkien's children, therefore he tried to make it good enough that his children would enjoy it. Meanwhile, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was written as commissioned by Tolkien's agent as a followup. Despite this, the latter is more well-known and more often referenced.
** On top of this, there is also the fact that Tolkien was a well-respected professor of philology at Oxford, and while he can hardly be counted as a prolific academic writer, he did write a number of very influential academic works. These include definitive Modern English translations of ''Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight'' and ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'', along with a very spirited defense of the literary value of Anglo-Saxon poetry and a dictionary of Middle English, each of which could be considered a ''magnum opus''.
* ''Literature/EndersGame'' was originally just another short story that Creator/OrsonScottCard wrote to pay the bills. He only expanded it into a novel so that it could serve as an introduction to ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' (the story that he ''really'' wanted to tell); [[http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2013-04-04.shtml he feels his best work is]] his short story ''[[http://janlowman.escuelacampoalegre.wikispaces.net/file/view/Card,+Unaccompanied+Sonata.pdf Unaccompanied Sonata]]''. While these are certainly well-regarded among those who have read them, ''Ender's Game'' has become one of the most widely read sci-fi novels of all time, is required reading in many middle schools, and [[Film/EndersGame received a film adaptation]].
* Creator/RobertLouisStevenson only wrote ''Literature/TheBlackArrow'' for a quick buck while he penned ''Literature/PrinceOtto'', which he considered a superior work. However, ''The Black Arrow'' ended up being much more popular and his third best known work, whereas ''Prince Otto'' became forgotten.
* ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' is Creator/WilliamGibson's most famous and acclaimed work because it invented the {{Cyberpunk}} genre and featured commentary on the information age decades ahead of its time. But in terms of actual literary merit, Gibson considers it one of his weakest works (though it ''was'' his first novel). Compared to his later novels, its characterization is minimal, and the plot is very straightforward.
* ''Literature/LittleWomen'' for Louisa May Alcott. She cobbled together a few stories based on herself and her sisters, and it was a rip-roaring success. She made the same thing happen to Jo in its final sequel ''Jo's Boys''.
* Creator/JaneAusten thought ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'', her most popular novel, was "too light and bright and sparkling" and deliberately planned afterward to write something more serious with a little "[[DarkerAndEdgier shade]]." The result was ''Literature/MansfieldPark'', a textbook case of GenreAdultery and her least popular novel.
* Creator/MarkTwain waffled between saying that his favorite of his works was ''Literature/HuckleberryFinn'', which has come to be his most respected novel, and ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc'', which few have even heard of. At one point, he claimed, "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."
* Creator/LewisCarroll greatly preferred ''Literature/SylvieAndBruno'' to his ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' books.
* Creator/CharlesDickens wrote enough other highly acclaimed and popular books that he only presents a borderline example, but ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' follows the mold: he wrote it in a hurry for the money and it continues to be one of the best known and [[YetAnotherChristmasCarol most imitated]] of his works. However, of his own works, his favourite was reportedly the novel ''Martin Chuzzlewit'', which hardly has the universal acclaim or influence of, say, ''Literature/OliverTwist'', ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'', ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'', ''Literature/GreatExpectations'' or the aforementioned ''Christmas Carol''.
* Robert Asprin started work on ''Another Fine Myth'' for laughs, merely to give himself a break from the grimness of another book he was writing, ''The Cold Cash War''. Nowadays, he is fondly remembered for the Literature/MythAdventures series, while ''Cold Cash War'' gathers dust alongside other ur-{{cyberpunk}} {{dystopia}}n sci-fi.
* Creator/WilliamShakespeare apparently thought more of ''The Rape of Lucrece'' than ''Theatre/KingLear''. This is largely due to ValuesDissonance; at the time, epic poetry was considered the highest form of literary art; plays, on the other hand, were seen as lowest-common-denominator trivialities. Today, of course, his plays are better known than his (still great) poetry.
* 19th-century British Romantic poets such as Creator/LordByron, Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/PercyShelley, and their peers were obsessed with reviving English verse drama and kept churning out faux-Shakespearean plays that seldom rose above mediocre. In time, many of them thought that this failure invalidated {{Romanticism}}. When worrying over how posterity would judge them, they never thought their lyric poetry could count for much.
* Creator/DavidWeber is famous for his ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books, while his ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'' books are being considered the critically preferred work. But it's ''Literature/TheWarGods'' that's his favorite, and he's described what he's written as far as ''Literature/TheHobbit'' in that series to the ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', and states that work will be the one that lasts.
* Creator/StephenKing:
** When most people think of him, they think of ''Literature/TheShining''. And while ''The Shining'' was indeed a very personal work to King (it being an analogy for King's own alcoholism) he has gone on record stating that he feels ''Literature/PetSematary'' was the scariest novel he ever wrote.
** Most people only know ''Literature/TheShining'' because of [[Film/TheShining the film]], not the book (''It'' would fall into a similar category). King himself would consider ''Literature/TheDarkTower'' to be his MagnumOpus, a truly huge, multi-volume work that took him ''years'' to write (and he notably made a point to finish after he nearly died). However, most literary critics, King fans, and even King himself in the forewords of some of his books, would hold ''Literature/TheStand'' to be his single best work.
* Creator/HPLovecraft:
** Lovecraft considered ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu'' to be one of his weaker stories. Although many of his actual readers agree, Cthulhu is by far his most well-known creation.
** Both Lovecraft and his later readers hold the highest esteem for ''Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace'', considered to be the quintessential CosmicHorrorStory.
** This arguably applies to the whole of Lovecraft's work: While he's considered to be one of the greatest American horror writers, he considered himself to be mediocre at best. (He was an AscendedFanboy of Robert W. Chambers.) For example, he had ''this'' to say about his writing:
---> "I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales, and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors - Poe, Arthur Machen, Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, and Montague Rhodes James. The only thing I can say in favor of my work is its sincerity."
* At different times in their careers, both the poet Creator/TSEliot and the author Creator/HenryJames thought their real destiny lay in writing for the theatre. Unfortunately, James was not a particularly good dramatist, and while Eliot did write some well-known plays (such as ''Murder in the Cathedral''), none have reached the fame of ''Literature/TheWasteLand'' or "Prufrock".
* Creator/AnthonyBurgess resents that he's best known for ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'', which he thought shallow compared to his other works. ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(novel)#Writer.27s_appraisal He dismissed it as "a novel I am prepared to repudiate... a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks."]])
* Creator/HarlanEllison expresses his frustration in one of his audiobooks over the fact that ''Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'', a story he banged out in a day, is so popular and has been reprinted many, many times; whereas "Grail", a story he slaved over for weeks, revising it several times, and in his opinion one of his best, had never been reprinted.
* While Mario Puzo is known for his novel ''Literature/TheGodfather'', which was a smash hit in the 1970s and turned into an [[Film/TheGodfather even more popular film]], Puzo always considered his earlier novel ''Literature/TheFortunatePilgrim'' to be his best. It's perhaps fitting that people generally remember the original ''The Godfather'' book as a fairly pulpy story compared to its adaptation.
* Creator/ErnestHemingway regarded the critically lambasted ''Across the River and Into the Trees'' as his greatest work.
* Cecil Day-Lewis (Creator/{{Daniel|DayLewis}}'s father) was Poet Laureate in the UK and wrote a lot of serious poetry and verse drama, but he also wrote detective novels to pay the bills. Particularly in the 50s and 60s he was far better known for the detective books (written under the name Nicholas Blake), some of which were adapted for film and TV. His poetry was never the equal of contemporaries like Auden or Larkin and is now largely forgotten, but his detective novels are still regarded as classics by some.
* Creator/PhilipLarkin, meanwhile, wanted to be a novelist rather than a poet. His two novels are read only by a few academics, but his poetry remains popular, acclaimed, and widely quoted.
* Creator/CharlesPerrault published writings and essays about art that were mostly forgotten centuries later. But the work he is still most famous for, his {{Fairy Tale}}s, are still popular today and indeed do much to define those that are in the SmallReferencePools. Ironically enough, Perrault felt ashamed about these childish stories and published them under his son's name.
* Same holds for the Creator/BrothersGrimm, who considered their work on historical linguistics their greatest achievement. Although linguists still use it (Grimm's Law, a sound change that occurred in Proto-Indo-European that moved towards Proto-Germanic) and respect them as early forayers into modern linguistics, everyone else remembers their {{Fairy Tale}}s.
* Creator/ThomasHardy's relationship with this phenomenon was twofold:
** Hardy always wanted to be a poet and believed that poetry had a "supreme place in literature". However, he wrote novels because [[MoneyDearBoy it was more lucrative, and he wouldn't earn a living if he started as a poet]]. With the success of ''Literature/TessOfTheDUrbervilles'' and ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'', he returned to writing poetry for the rest of his life. Most people tend to know Hardy as a novelist than as a poet, though.
** Regarding his career as a novelist, Hardy considered ''Literature/JudeTheObscure'' his favorite and best novel, but it was harshly received at the time. At least one reviewer called it "Jude the Obscene", and Hardy himself claimed that the Anglican bishop William Walsham How burned his own copy. Subsequent scholars (and readers) [[VindicatedByHistory have taken Hardy's side]].
* Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs considered ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' stories to be his best works. They are obscure compared to his other series, ''Literature/{{Tarzan}}''. One need only look at Burroughs's Hollywood legacy. ''Tarzan'' has been adapted countless times since the days of silent movies, and has been an enormously successful property, while the film adaptation of ''John Carter'' spent ''81 years'' in DevelopmentHell, was completed by Disney in 2012 and promptly bombed in a spectacular way.
* Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov wrote dozens of poems, plenty of stories, and considered them to be much better than some fairy-tale poem he wrote in simpleton language when he was young. Except that today, the poems and stories are all but forgotten, while ''The Little Humpbacked Horse'' earned him a statue for ''composing a folk tale''.
* John Buchan is most remembered for codifying the Spy Genre with ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'', but the novel he considered his best was the historical romance/fantasy novel, ''Witch Wood''.
* Creator/MiguelDeCervantes's ''Literature/DonQuixote''. At the 1600s in Spain, money was found in theater, and glory was found in poetry. Miguel de Cervantes wrote a comedy book that didn't get noticed by critics. Nonetheless, it was successful enough for the editor kept asking for a continuation. But Cervantes had AttentionDeficitCreatorDisorder and wanted to write a lot of projects that would bring him glory, like "Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda". [[ComedyGhetto No one took the comedy book seriously, not even Cervantes.]] Maybe that continuation would have never seen the light of day if not for a {{fanfiction}} writer that wrote himself the second part, doing the worst insult you can do to an author: A FixFic, because Cervantes wrote some characters deserving of a better writer. Cervantes [[EvenBetterSequel decided to write the best second part he could]], and so we have now the second part of ''Don Quixote''.
* Doctor Creator/ArthurConanDoyle created a detective character based on an old medical professor whose techniques and insight had always impressed him to pay the bills while he worked on the historical epics he loved so much and which he was sure would make his name and reputation as a writer and artist. Unfortunately for Conan Doyle, the detective character was ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'', who became one of the most iconic characters of all time, while Doyle's historical dramas, which he much preferred, are largely forgotten. Doyle [[CreatorBacklash was not happy about this]] (he even tried killing Holmes off at one point, but fan backlash forced him to do an about-face).
* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/Nightfall1941": "Nightfall" was, to Creator/IsaacAsimov, just another story, though it regularly appears at the top of lists of the best SF story ever. It especially irked him because he wrote it when he was 21 and was [[CreatorBacklash somewhat offended]] by the implication that, in fifty years and hundreds and hundreds of works, he never did anything better. His own favorite was "Literature/TheLastQuestion".
** Asimov also recalls that he thought ''Literature/{{Strikebreaker}}'' would be a social commentary bomb. It remained instead a relatively obscure short story, and he has explicitly contrasted it with ''Nightfall''.
* Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters'' and his ''[[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia Narnia]]'' series sold phenomenally, by his standards, but his own favorite was ''Literature/TillWeHaveFaces''. Then, his big problem with Screwtape was that it, alone among his works, was actively unpleasant to write. Another one of Lewis' favorite books that he wrote is ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'', which he once said was worth ten 'Screwtapes'.
* Matsuo Bashō was a Japanese poet from the 1600s who is considered to be one of the masters of {{haiku}}, then called "hokku"[[note]]Hokku (発句, lit. "starting verse") is the opening stanza for renga and renku, both forms of collaborative linked verse poetry. When Bashō came around, the hokku began to appear as a self-contained poem, and it was then renamed "haiku" by the 19th-century Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki[[/note]]. Regarding this, Bashō himself said: "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."
* Reki Kawahara's light novel series ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' was originally a one-volume stand-alone story written for a literary competition in 2002 that he didn't even submit it to. It was instead put on the web, and only after gaining popularity, did he decide to start writing follow on volumes. SAO eventually got so big it was published to paperback in 2009 and is now eleven volumes and still going, with a Manga, Anime, and Video Game adaptation plus a huge fanbase.
* Neil Munro considered himself an author of historical novels, his ''Para Handy'' stories being something he wrote to pay the bills. A hundred years later, the ''Para Handy'' stories are still well-loved Scottish literature and have been adapted several times. Fans might also be familiar with his other humorous stories, ''Erchie, My Droll Friend'' and ''Jimmy Swan.'' The historical novels are mostly known as "that thing Munro did that wasn't as good as ''Para Handy''."
* Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest who was received into the Catholic Church, is best known for ''Come Rack! Come Rope!'', a novel set at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics; and ''Literature/LordOfTheWorld'', a dystopian novel about the Antichrist and the end of the world. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis called the latter novel "prophetic". Monsignor Benson himself saw ''The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary'', a historical novel in which the titular Richard is sent by God to deliver a message of dire importance to the king while enduring torment from the king's men, as his personal favorite of his books.
* Creator/JDSalinger, in a very, ''very'' rare interview, said that ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' was a mistake, and the bulk of his writing since then has been about the [[Literature/FrannyAndZooey Glass family,]] as well as [[AuthorTract nonfiction]] about Vedāntic Hinduism.
* Creator/KAApplegate enlisted Ghost Writers to help her complete ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' so that she could instead give ''Literature/{{Everworld}}'' her full undivided attention. Everworld became a rather obscure book series, while Animorphs was, for a time, the most popular children's book series in America.
* Creator/GeneWolfe is best known for TheEpic MindScrew ''Literature/TheBookOfTheNewSun.'' The author himself considers it overrated, and his own favorite is the later FantasticRomance ''There Are Doors.''
* Creator/RobertRankin's novel ''The Fandom of the Operator'' actually revolves around this trope. The villain turns out to be a deceased author suffering from Magnum Opus dissonance, driven mad by a botched attempt to raise him from the dead to continue writing the detective novels that he always considered vastly inferior to his beloved but much less popular space operas.
* Creator/HermanMelville had a very strange relationship with this phenomenon:
** During his own lifetime, Melville was really only respected for his first two books, ''Typee'' and ''Omoo'', [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory quasi-biographical]] adventure stories based on his own experience in the South Pacific. These two works are now only taught in dedicated Melville classes, and towards the end of his career, with no knowledge of ''Literature/MobyDick'' coming down the road, he expressed regret that he would be forever known as "the man who lived among the cannibals."
** Melville's first serious attempt at great fiction was ''Mardi'', a WackyWaysideTribe-laden adventure story bogged down with snarling [[ContemplateOurNavels philosophical tangents]], a protagonist who up and disappears for two-thirds of the novel, and an open ending. Despite all this, he called ''Mardi'' his "child of many prayers" and hoped it would blow audiences away. It was blasted by critics for all of this and for being quite different from his first two novels; modern scholars often consider it the only outright '''bad''' thing he wrote.
** ''Literature/MobyDick'' is, of course, Melville's most famous novel, and as with ''Mardi'' he set out intentionally to write a magnificent work - calling it this time a "mighty book on a mighty theme." While ''Moby-Dick'' is now one of the fixtures in the canon, it was very poorly received and called blasphemous by the press of the day. Though Melville anticipated the controversy, he told Nathaniel Hawthorne in a letter that he had written "a very evil book". On top of that, Melville actually ''thought he could write an even better novel'', and only gave up that notion after ''Moby-Dick'' failed. Though the books after that, ''Pierre; or the Ambiguities'', ''The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade'' and his posthumous work, ''Billy Budd'' are regarded among his best writings today.
* Creator/VCAndrews is most known for her gothic, incest-laden family sagas like ''Literature/FlowersInTheAttic'', but she was particularly proud of ''Gods of Green Mountain'' [[http://www.completevca.com/GodsGreenMountainLetter.pdf according to her brothers]]. Never heard of it? That's because it was published years after her death and is only available in eBook format. It's also notable that this was the only ''science fiction'' novel to ever be published under her name.
* John Gardner considered ''Literature/TheManFromBarbarossa'', his eleventh ''Literature/JamesBond'' book, to be his best in the series. Critics and some of the readers hold it as one of his weakest and think of his earlier stories in higher regard.
* Creator/GeorgetteHeyer wanted to be taken seriously as a historical novelist and expended much effort and research on works such as ''My Lord John'' (a novel set in the Middle Ages, left unfinished at her death), considering her sparkling and enduringly popular Regency romances to be fluffy potboilers. Readers almost unanimously agree it's in the Regency-set fiction that she displays her true genius.
* "September 1, 1939" is one of the most famous poems by Creator/WHAuden; however he came to dislike it, and decades later, he only allowed it to be reprinted in an anthology with a note saying that he considers it to be "trash which he is ashamed to have written."
* The best-known work of Creator/ShelSilverstein was his children's book ''Literature/TheGivingTree''. However, Silverstein openly confessed during his life that ''The Giving Tree'' was not his favorite of his books.
* Creator/DorothyLSayers remains best known for her mystery novels starring AmateurSleuth Literature/LordPeterWimsey, but she personally thought her best work was a translation of Literature/TheDivineComedy.
* Creator/AlfredBester thought ''Golem[[superscript:100]]'' was his best work. Most of those who've read it consider it to be one of his worst.
* Zigzagged by the ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'' series. Jeff Kinney, the author, has said that his favorite book of the series is ''The Long Haul'', which many fans consider the beginning of the series's {{Sequelitis}}. However, the installment Kinney is proudest of is the very well-received first book.
* Creator/LFrankBaum will always be best known for ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', but afterwards he was roped into making it a series. By the fourth and fifth books, his introductions become pleas to his fans to allow him to write anything else. After the sixth book, he finally tried to quit and began a new series that he considered his best work. After two books, ''Literature/TheSeaFairies'' and ''Literature/SkyIsland'', it became clear that the series was a flop, and with his mounting financial troubles, Baum would have to return to the Oz series to pay the bills. He would work on the series until his death. As an aside, his favorite Oz book was ''Literature/TheScarecrowOfOz'', perhaps because it includes the main characters from his other failed series and almost acts as a suitable conclusion to the series. It is rarely cited as a favorite among fans, tellingly.
* ZigZagged by Creator/DrSeuss. He considered ''Literature/TheLorax'' to be the best book he ever wrote, but general audiences found the book to be too {{anvilicious}}. However, it has since been VindicatedByHistory.
* Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez [[https://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/20140417/abci-garcia-marquez-odio-cien-201404172322.html talked about his displeasure]] that he got international fame for writing ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' and his dislike for what many critics consider as the greatest novel in Latin American literature. His dislike for it stems for how it [[ToughActToFollow overshadowed the rest of his work]], for [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible how critics and intellectuals have praised it without understanding it properly]], brought him [[CelebrityIsOverrated unwanted amounts of fame]], and lastly, he considers his other novels to be far superior to it.
* William March considered his 1954 novel ''Literature/TheBadSeed'' to be thoroughly mediocre, though it is his most well-known and praised novel today.
* Creator/BeatrixPotter's favorites of her own books were ''Literature/TheTailorOfGloucester'' and ''Literature/TheTaleOfThePieAndThePattyPan'', but her most popular book by far is [[FirstInstallmentWins her first one]], ''Literature/TheTaleOfPeterRabbit.''
* Creator/FranzKafka despised his work so much that, on his deathbed, he asked his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscript and notes. Had Brod not declined his friend's dying wish, Kafka's most famous works like ''Literature/TheTrial'' and ''Literature/TheCastle'' wouldn't be around today. The only one of his works Kafka had anything good to say about in his lifetime, meanwhile, was ''Literature/TheVerdict'', a short story which is now either dismissed as a piece of juvenalia or forgotten entirely.
** Asking Brod to destroy his manuscripts and notes is an interesting story. Kafka mentioned several times before his death that he intended to ask Brod to do so, and Brod always told him that he wouldn't do it, as he respected Kafka's work and disagreed with Kafka's desire to have it destroyed. He even believed Kafka really didn't want his works destroyed, because if he did, he would have either done it himself or asked someone else to do it.
* Turkish science fiction writer and artist C. M. Kosemen is most famous (on the internet, at least) as the writer of ''Literature/AllTomorrows''. However, he has personally claimed that his favorite work is his long-gestating SpeculativeBiology project, ''WebOriginal/{{Snaiad}}''.
* [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] with Creator/AgathaChristie, as both her main characters are successful and well-loved by the public. However, Poirot is slightly more well-remembered and ingrained in popular culture, whereas Miss Marple was Christie's own favourite of the two.
* Clement Moore, a 19th-Century writer and theologian, considered his American-Hebrew Dictionary to be his greatest achievement. What he is most known for, however, is a small poem he wrote for his young children called ''Literature/TwasTheNightBeforeChristmas''.
* Henry De Vere Stacpoole considered his most famous work, the 1908 novel ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon'' to be an inferior work. He called his later novel ''The Man Who Lost Himself'' (1918) his masterpiece. He also disliked the ''Blue Lagoon'' sequels, which he did mainly to [[MoneyDearBoy pay the bills]].
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