Books that were once insanely popular, but now no one knows about them

Tasso isn't forgotten at all. It's just angloplebs and their spawn (on Veeky Forums in particular, but also in the real world) that don't read him.

tasso is goat

Forever Amber? It was written in the 1940s, so by todays standards, it's tame. Not graphic, that is, because the main character's (Amber's) actions are anything but tame. That Amber is one of the most hated "heroines" ever , I only held on to the end because the story's really well written. And it's only about 900 pages :-)

Thanks, might order it.

You won't regret it :-) I hated it and loved it at the same time. Wish there was more like it, but I haven't really found anything so far.

Sinuhe the Egyptian by Mika Waltari. It was the world's bestselling book when it appeared and hugely scandalous at the time because of some descriptions of sexual intercourse. It more of less single-pagedly founded the genre of historical fiction and remains the most successful book by a Finnish author to date. It's still good, too. Can recommend.

>appeared
"when it was first published" or "came out" I meant.

I only know about Tasso from those not-Pynchon posts decoding Lot 49

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appeared is totally acceptable. 'appeared on bookstore shelves' might help clarify the meaning.

Nearly everything Sir Walter Scott wrote. He was the most popular English-language writer of the 19th Century and these days nobody can name any of his stuff that isn't Ivanhoe.

Lost Horizon

DuMaurier's Trilby is perhaps one of the most popular novels of all time, one character's based on Whistler as a young man, and the arch villain's Svengali, whom people seem to know (about) without knowing where he came from. Dover prints a cheap edition (just as it does of Kingsley's). Word of warning: it's horribly anti-Semitic.
Another is Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth (about Erasmus' printer\artist father) and still another's Blackmore's Lorna Doone, both of which I rec.

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Anderson still commands a bit of respect

"same league as Dante" is a little much, but this one is really good.

mentioned on Veeky Forums at LEAST once a week

I saw this at barnes and noble the other day, is he worth reading?

Lusiads

How about Zweig's biographies? Hell, anything by him that isn't Chess Story or Fouché doesn't get that much rep these days, and he once was the most popular author in the world.

Also Karl May's adventure novels and Frank Norris' whole body of work.

what's this about

It's curious how this stuff changes from country to country, cause this book is still huge here in Mexico.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_Lusíadas

Probably half of what is on Project Gutenberg

I hardly ever hear mention of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili anymore.

Fuck off its really good

This one really hurts, although I wouldn't call him a "forgotten" author.

In any case, Veeky Forums should cream its pants for Dos Passos, but people here never talk about his stuff.
Yup.
This one too. Was actually one of the first books I ever read, and the concept of the Shangri-La is pretty well known, which makes the book's fading popularity even stranger.

Tasso is really good! What are you talking about. It's aneid, pharsalia and the homeric epei in neat renaissance italian.

You know who was insanly popular, but now no one gives a brass farthing about?
Ossian.

Just heard about ossian yesterday, would anybody recommend it

I'm a girl and I really enjoyed what I read of this book!

Anything by Sinclair Lewis. Babbit and Main Street especially

Alroght, I'll give it a read.
Anything else specific by Dos Passos worth reading?

it's feel good self insert shit for plebs and it's slow af. poor man's late hamsun desu

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Manhattan Transfer. Good novel about New York urban life.

>>>/arse/

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Valley of the Dolls. Runaway best-seller in the sixties, one my mother was still ridiculing for its awful writing well into the nineties.

The Fifty Shades of Grey in its day.