Marcel Proust, hero of self-publishers

In Search of Lost Time is often spoken of in the same breath as James Joyce's Ulysses, as among the world's greatest literature. Suppose I told you it began as a self-publishing effort and he wrote his own glowing reviews?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/28/marcel-proust-paid-for-reviews-pra...

Ulysses isn't that great a bit of literature

:)

Along the same lines:

In October 1845, a short-lived New York magazine called the Aristidean published a review of Edgar Allan Poe’s story collection Tales. The article spouted praise like a dancing fountain. Poe’s detective story “The Gold-Bug” “perfectly succeeded in his perfect aim.” “The Fall of the House of Usher” was “grand and impressive.” “Murders in the Rue Morgue” was marked by “profound and searching analysis.”

And, overall, Poe wielded the kind of literary power that “can only be possessed by a man of high genius,” according to the anonymous reviewer—who was almost certainly Edgar Allan Poe himself.

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/fall/feature/edgar-allan-poe%E2%80%99s-hatch...