#TopTenTuesday Unfinished Books by Famous Authors #TuesdayBookBlog

Posted on by whatcathyreadnext

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

TTT Blank book pagThis week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish. I rarely set aside a book unfinished and on the occasions I do, it’s because I’m not enjoying it or think it’s poorly written. I choose not to publicise widely my dislike of a book so I’ve decided to focus on books their authors did not finish, mostly because they died before they could. (Compiled and annotated based on information from Wikipedia.)

  1. The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens – only six of the planned twelve instalments had been written at the time of his death in 1870
  2. The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov – despite the author’s request that it be destroyed upon his death in 1977, it was published by his son in 2009
  3. Sanditon by Jane Austen – only eleven chapters had been completed before she set it aside a few months before her death in 1817 
  4. Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L Sayers – a Lord Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane murder mystery novel the author began writing but abandoned. It was completed by Jill Paton-Walsh, based on notes and fragments, and published in 1998.
  5. Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson – set during the Napoleonic Wars, it was unfinished at the time of his death in 1894
  6. The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald – published posthumously in 1941 by Edmund Wilson, a writer, critic and friend of the author
  7. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace – a novel the author had been working on for over a decade, it was published in 2011 pieced together from manuscript notes and computer files
  8. Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) by Herman Melville – published posthumously in various versions before what is considered the ‘authoritative’ version in 1962
  9. The First Man by Albert Camus – the incomplete manuscript of this autobiographical novel was found at the site of the car accident that killed him in 1960
  10. Silverview by John le Carré – completed by the author’s son and published posthumously in 2021.

Have you read any of these? Would you read an unfinished novel, or a novel completed by someone other than the original author?

27 thoughts on “#TopTenTuesday Unfinished Books by Famous Authors #TuesdayBookBlog”

    1. Thank you. I couldn’t have come up with ten DNFs anyway. I’m a ‘struggle to the end’ person. Can’t help it. Perhaps it’s a carry over from ‘clear your plate’ from childhood!

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    1. Thanks. I don’t listen to many audiobooks but my sister does and I know she finds it so important to have the right narrator. In fact, I know she often selects books because they have a particular narrator.

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    1. Yes it is, but I guess it’s the way of things that a prolific author will always be in the middle of something new. By the way, I loved how you tried to be positive about the books you DNF even though they didn’t work for you.

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    1. Yes, it is surprising, isn’t it? I wonder if they’d been able to finish the books what we’d think about them. And if they were subsequently completed by other authors, what they’d think about their efforts!

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  8. John le Carré had a gruesome upbringing so all the more reason to admire him and his achievements. Nevertheless, Silverview is so sad and reminds us it is fair game to ask if John le Carré the spy had more Achilles heels than he had toes?

    David Cornwell aka John le Carré was a formidable yet enchanting character of great intellect. Indeed, I would argue he was indisputably the best writer ever in the espionage genre but was he the perfect spy?

    No and de facto he admitted being an imperfect spy in real life inter alia between the lines of his own letters which were of course published posthumously as was Silverview. Also worth a peep is a brief article (dated 31 October 2022) in the news section of TheBurlingtonFiles website which includes some intriguing insights about him and others in MI6 known as Pemberton’s People.

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    1. I have a copy of Silverview but haven’t read it yet but intend as I’ve read just about everything else he wrote, including his memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel although I’m there was a lot about his life he left out of that. But his anecdotes were very amusing.

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    1. I have a copy of Silverview and will definitely read that as I love le Carre’s novels and it was completed by his son who might be expected to know really well his father’s intentions for the book. Possibly Thrones, Dominations because it’s by Dorothy L Sayers and I’m sure we have a copy in the house somewhere. But, like you, I have little interest in the rest.

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  10. Oh, interesting! I haven’t read any of these. I don’t know that I would read an unfinished book. I don’t even start Netflix series unless they already have more than a couple of seasons available. That way I’m not disappointed when it suddenly gets cancelled! LOL.

    Happy TTT!

    Susan
    http://www.blogginboutbooks.com

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    1. Some of them have been finished by other authors so I might be influenced by who that author was. Some of the books were very unfinished, just initial drafts, notes, etc. I think that might make it very difficult to determine the original author’s intentions. I mean, how many books are published based on an author’s first draft? Not many, I suspect.

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  11. Love your take on the prompt! I haven’t read any of these, but I think I would read a book that was completed by a different author as long as it was respectfully done.

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  13. Very nice twist on this topic. I read the fragment manuscript of Sanditon and if she had lived to finish it, I’m sure it would have outshone P&P! A couple others I can think of – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, which was finished by her niece. Also, Paul Torday’s The Death of an Owl, which was finished by his son. I also read a book called Emma Brown by Clare Boylan, which was based on Charlotte Brontë’s manuscript, of which she left only 20 pages.

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  14. Really fun and unique twist on this week’s topic, I had no idea some of these authors died with unfinished manuscripts, those I guess that will always be the way of writers who are constantly working on the next thing….same is probably true of readers tbh, constantly reading the next book, there’s bound to be something that you start and then don’t finish before you die. I don’t know if I’d read an unfinished novel as I’d find the lack of an ending frustrating, but I’d be willing to read a book completed by a different author as long as it was done in a respectful way.
    My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2023/07/25/top-ten-tuesday-430/

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