Posted 29 minutes ago14 People Who Didn't Become Super Famous Until After They DiedThese iconic cultural figures were actually barely known when they were alive.by Jenna GuillaumeBuzzFeed ContributorFacebookPinterestLink Some people are such cultural icons that it's hard to believe they were never not famous - but for the figures in this list, their status didn't really grow until after their deaths. For many, it was close friends, family, and fans who became their own personal hype people and made sure their legacy lived on long after they did. 1. Franz Kafka Brandstaetter Images / Getty Images Franz Kafka didn't publish a lot while he was alive, and what he did publish - including his now-famous novella The Metamorphosis - was not widely known. Before his death at age 40, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts, but Max Brod not only couldn't do it - he had them published and helped turn his friend into an influential literary figure. 2. James Dean John Kobal Foundation / Getty Images James Dean was really just beginning to be well known when he was alive. Only one movie in which he played the lead was released before his death at age 24 - East of Eden, which he received a posthumous Oscar nomination for. Rebel Without a Cause was released just under a month after his death, launching his icon status. His last movie, Giant, was released the following year and earned him another posthumous Oscar nom. 3. Stieg Larsson Tara Walton / Getty Images Stieg Larsson was a journalist who died at the age of 50, leaving behind three manuscripts for his Millennium series, which had been accepted for publication but had not yet been published. The first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was released in Sweden 2005, a year after the author's death, and an English language version came out in 2008 - turning him into one of the bestselling novelists in the world. 4. Jeff Buckley Bill Tompkins / Getty Images Jeff Buckley and his music had a cult following in life, but it was after his death at age 30 that his fame and influence truly skyrocketed. He's now perhaps most known for his "Hallelujah" cover, which was released as a single in 2007, 10 years after his death. 5. Emily Dickinson Boston Globe / Getty Images Only 10 of the thousands of poems Emily Dickinson wrote were published before her death; after it, her sister Lavinia played a key part in getting the rest published. The first volume was released in 1890, four years after Emily had died - but even then, it wasn't until 1955 that a complete collection of Emily's work was published by scholar Thomas H Johnson. 6. H.P. Lovecraft Buyenlarge / Getty Images H. P. Lovecraft played a huge part in shaping the modern horror genre, but during his lifetime, his work was published in pulp magazines that didn't reach a broad audience. After his death at age 46 in 1937, his friends August Derleth and Donald Wandrei created their own publishing house to release hardcover editions of his works, but it was the popularity of paperbacks in the 1970s that allowed H.P. Lovecraft's stories to finally gain a lot of attention. 7. Vincent van Gogh Dea Picture Library / Getty Images Vincent van Gogh was a prolific artist, creating thousands of works, but he only sold one painting before his death at age 37. It was his widowed sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, that made it her mission to have Vincent's work - and himself as an artist - widely known and appreciated in the years after his death. 8. Otis Redding Elaine Mayes / Getty Images Otis Redding's musical legacy persists despite the fact that he was just 26 when he died in 1967. He did achieve success while he was alive, but his most well-known song - and the one that cemented his fame - "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay)" didn't come out until after his death - making it the first song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, posthumously. 9. John Kennedy Toole Grove Atlantic / Via groveatlantic.com John Kennedy Toole died in 1969, aged 31. His famous work, A Confederacy of Dunces, was rejected in his lifetime and wasn't published until 1980, after his mother enlisted the help of novelist Walker Percy. The following year, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 10. Herman Melville Historical / Getty Images Herman Melville did achieve early success as a writer, but his most famous work, Moby-Dick, was not popular when he was alive, and by the time he died at age 72 in 1891, his books were out of print and he was largely forgotten. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, scholarly interest in Herman Melville emerged, and public attention along with it. 11. Johann Sebastian Bach Dea / Getty Images In his life and in the immediate years following his death in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach was known mainly as an organist and teacher, with his original music largely forgotten for nearly 80 years until 1829, when Felix Mendelssohn, then 20, performed his version of Bach's "St Matthew Passion", leading to un