When I was little and I used to tell someone that I wanted to be a writer, someone came to say to me the phrase "writers only get paid when they are dead." Today that phrase has come back to haunt me and I couldn't help thinking about those writers who were recognized after his death.
Edgar Allan Poe
Inspiration for Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and the thousands of writers who discovered his work, Poe was the American author who he proposed to himself to live only from writing. An objective that cost him more than a bankruptcy and serious problems with alcohol, episodes that saw the birth of some of the best horror stories of history. Poe not only gifted us with great stories, but he forever transformed fantasy literature by nurturing it with an atmosphere and perspective never seen before. Of course, by the time the world praised Poe's work, the author had already passed away in 1849.
Franz Kafka
The one who was one of the greats thinkers of the early twentieth century, the writer of Jewish origin Franz Kafka, had a hazardous life dedicated mainly to law and writing. However, the author always expressed his wish that all his works would be destroyed once he was dead. Luckily for the world, his friend Max Brod, whom Kafka entrusted the task, began to circulate Metamorphosis by their circles. The rest is history.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson's life was an example of vision and, at the same time, of misunderstanding in a world like that of a nineteenth century in which women poets did not proliferate, much less with poetry as peculiar as Dickinson's. Obsessed with themes like death, immortality or passion dedicated to a lover who was never heard of, Dickinson he wrote more than 18 thousand poems of which only twelve were published by editors who, in addition, constantly modified their style to adapt it to the standards of the time. Locked up at home during the last years of her life, Dickinson died in 1886, it being her sister Vinnie who would discover up to 800 poems in notebooks in her room.
Roberto bolaño
While Wild detectives enjoyed great recognition in the late 90s, the death of Roberto Bolaño in 2003 and the publication of his posthumous work 2666 completely shot the popularity of the Chilean writer. This last work, whose publication Bolaño entrusted to his wife in five different volumes that would ensure the subsistence of the family, was finally published in a single volume that transcended as one of the most influential Latin American books of this century. In fact, after the death of the author the number of publishing contracts increased at 50 and the translation at 49.
Stieg Larsson
Larsson's case is one of helplessness to say the least, especially when the famous Swedish author of the Millenium saga died a few days before the publication of the first book, Men who did not love women, and after having delivered the third volume of the saga to its publisher, The queen in the palace of the air currents. The Millennium saga became a phenomenon whose million-dollar sales not only served to confront the author's girlfriend and family, but to remain hooked on a saga that, sadly, could not be continued by an author who was already immersed in the creation of the fourth volume of the saga.
Salvador Benesdra
Argentine writer Salvador Benesdra suffered from anxiety and psychotic breakouts throughout his life, an illness that increased disproportionately when his first novel, The translator, was rejected by all publishers who considered his work too extensive and overloaded. In 1996 and at the age of 4, the author threw himself from the tenth floor of his building in Buenos Aires, although he had had time to send the work to the Planet Award. One of the members of the contest jury, Elvio Gandolfo, decided to publish Benesdra's work with the help of the author's family. Today, The Translator is considered one of the great novels of Argentine literature.
Anna Frank
One of the cruelest cases of a writer who never knew the impact of his work in life was little Anne Frank. Turned into the voice of what was one of the darkest episodes in history, Frank was a young Jewish woman who spent from 11 to 13 years locked in a shelter in the city of Amsterdam with his family. While the Nazi troops stormed the Dutch capital, the young woman began to write in a diary where she not only delved into the conflict that the world was experiencing, but also the typical questions and existentialisms of any teenager. After his death in a concentration camp, the sole survivor of the family, his father Otto Frank, discovered the most famous newspaper in history.
Would you like to read the Ana Frank's diary?
Sylvia Plath
On February 11, 1963, at the age of 30, Sylvia Plath locked herself in her apartment room and turned on the gas until she died. A death that literature continues to mourn, although it was discovered a few years ago that the famous poet suffered from bipolarity, a disease that erased all suspicions about the death of a father that he had not yet managed to overcome. After his death, her husband Ted Hughes edited all manuscripts Except for a diary that included material about their relationship. In 1982, Sylvia Plath became the first female author to receive a posthumous Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the most influential writers of letters and feminism died before witnessing the success of a work that for years suffered from the illness and financial problems of the author.
These writers who were recognized after their death become great examples of how a work can be valued in different ways by critics or for a time that, at times, may not be prepared to navigate certain stories.