I’ve been wondering about this. Colleen Hoover is well known as the sort of poster girl for sloppily written, baffling and aggressively mediocre books.
What was the equivalent to her in previous times? Like the Romantic or Modernist period?
During the the 1890s, what book was considered “embarassing” or super low brow to be caught with (in the same way the book community largely treats It Ends With Us)?
Isn’t it amazing how many authors there are who were abaolute bestsellers in their days, but are forgotten nowadays?
Look at the bookshelves in historic houses if they still have the collections. So many books I’ve never heard of, so many authors too.
One that I recall because she came out with a book about once a year was Joyce Elbert whose best known books were ‘The Crazy Ladies’ and ‘The Return of the Crazy Ladies’. A one time staple author of the paperback book racks whose last work seems to have come out in the early 80s and is now all but forgotten.