posthumous fame
Glory after death
Posthumous fame is recognition or celebrity that comes only after a person's death.
Many artists, writers, and thinkers achieved posthumous fame—Van Gogh sold almost nothing in his lifetime, Kafka instructed his friend to burn his manuscripts.
She never knew posthumous fame awaited her.
The phrase often carries a note of tragedy or irony about the timing of success.
- rediscoveryFinding something previously known
- lost manuscriptText no longer extant
- statueThree-dimensional sculpted likeness
- bustFailure or sculpture
- remembranceAct of holding something in mind
grave · legacy · memorialization · unpublished works · found footage · literary estate · mythologizing · immortality · unsung · vindication · portrait · creative genius · Kafka · timelessness · masterpiece · Emily Dickinson · posthumously · museum
- Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson, poems, fascicles, dashes, Lavinia
- art worldartist, painter, painting, paintings, sculpture
- deathdead, deceased, corpse, mortality, demise
- legacybequest, inheritance, heirloom, heritage, tradition
- Types of Famecelebrity, stardom, notoriety, infamy, A-list
- artist biographiesbiographical sketches, visual artists
posthumous famehas-been
Former notable, now irrelevant
fallen star · flash in the pan · fifteen minutes of fame · washed-up · one-hit wonder