What author have you read the most books from?

I think that's what they had to do to make a living. I've seen some authors bristle about this and insist that early novelists used to publish multiple books a year and that one book a year is the most commercial route.

Interesting. I once read a jocular anecdote about a friend of Isaac Asimov calling him on the phone. His wife answered and said, "Sorry, he's just started writing a book," and the friend said, "Okay, I'll just wait till he's finished."

I recently read a biography of Somerset Maugham, who was very cagey about pacing releases to ensure just the right commercial flow - not too much and not too little. I also was interested that he was strategic about demanding large advances - not because he needed the money (he didn't), but because a publisher who has just paid out a large advance is more motivated to promote the book energetically.

Maybe Trollope doesn't have as many books as you'd think because of how long 19th century novels had to be. By his own account he was like a machine: he'd write for a set period of time before going off to work for the postal service, and when he finished writing a book he'd start another one the same day. That's supposed to be a big reason why he didn't really make it into the canon; once his autobiography came out and people found out about his method, they dismissed him as a potboiler-writing hack.

What kind of wealth writers came from might also have something to do with it? But a lot of the most prolific genre authors never slow down even after they become rich.

This from wikipedia
"Pierre Alexis, Viscount of Ponson du Terrail (8 July 1829 – 20 January 1871) was a French writer. He was a prolific novelist, producing in the space of twenty years some seventy-three volumes"

Yeah, there's definitely a thing, at least in 19th century literature, with writers having to turn out endless volumes just to make ends meet. Margaret Oliphant is the classic example; she wrote about 120 books, novels and histories and biographies, plus God knows how many works of semi-anonymous criticism. Virginia Woolf has a famous bit about how "Mrs. Oliphant sold her brain, her very admirable brain, prostituted her culture and enslaved her intellectual liberty in order that she might earn her living and educate her children."

Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote quite a lot too.

In talking about the 19th century you have to contend with serialization too.

We read Dickens (and a whole bunch of others) as discrete books, whereas their contemporaries would have read in installments, which is a totally different phenomenology of reading!

Right, and not everything that was serialized got collected and reprinted, and a lot of writers published anonymously, so there's this whole amorphous mass of relatively unknown literature floating around under the surface of The Victorian Novel.

Are you guys not including children’s authors in your tallies, because I definitely read all of Roald Dahls books growing up

In no particular order. It think my top authors are probably

Roald Dahl
Terry Pratchett
John LeCarre
Patrick O’Brien

As in I've probably read every book those authors have written

With Dickens, Trollope and Victor Pelevin knocking around probably would take much to get Dumas on the list as well. Peter Carey and Hillary Mantel are definitely in a bubbling under category.

Retreading the thread and acknowledging NV. I think I must have read all the Ian Feeling bond novels as a teenager as well. Should read again.

Harry Mathews

Cool!

he just kept on taking left turns, right up until the end...a real achievement considering how prolific he was

Yes. I read a bunch but think I missed a few.

Had to think about it, but my answer is P. G. Wodehouse, who I see has already been mentioned a few times.

Wondering about Asimov though, even if I long ago stopped reading him and have only read a fraction of his output.

henning mankell

def Roald Dahl for me. Non children's book author would be Vargas Llosa probably. Not my favourite but his highs are good and he has a more rewarding back catalogue than any of the other "boom"ers afaict

Ever read any of his collected stories for adults? I never did, though used to see Tales of the Unexpected, Some One Like You, and others (come to think of it, got an omnibus somewhere). Have watched some adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents

I’d love to know more about Harry Mathews. I have an omnibus edition of all his novels but am intimidated. Also have his 20 Lines A Day book and that approachable and enjoyable. He was an Oulipo guy, right?

Yes indeed. At one point the only American member, or the only name one, or something.

yes he was in Oulipo but unlike most of those guys he didn't usually foreground whatever constraints he used...you can just sense there is something weird running in the background and fueling the mood and his choices

if you enjoyed Twenty Lines A Day I wld recommend Singular Pleasures, the collection of masturbation vignettes.

This too:

http://jean-claude-kuner.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/manuskript_farce_double_english.pdf

I think a good entry point w/ the novels is My Life In CIA, and maybe backward toward some of the thornier denser stuff, Tlooth and Sinking of the Odradek Stadium

Thanks for the tips, Hadrian. I attempted Tlooth but couldn’t find my way in. My Life in CIA looks more my speed.

Yeah, that, or wikipedia makes this look appealing too:
Mathews's next novel, Cigarettes, marked a change in his work. Less whimsical but no less technically sophisticated than his first three novels, it consists of an interlocking series of narratives revolving around a small group of interconnected characters. The book's approach to narrative is generally realistic, and Cigarettes is ultimately moving in a way that none of his previous books attempted to be.[14]

Cigarettes is terrific

Yup

Updike probably. He churned them out.

probably RL stine lol. i collected tons of them because i liked the covers as a little kid then a couple years later a puritan streak in me made me commit to reading all of them. even at the time i knew they were thin gruel and i remember nothing about them now.

as an adult, probably DFW, in my early 20s