The Writer: An Artist or Their Art?

Do we, as a society, favour writers who we're familiar with and thus award them greater respect as artists? I for one, know I have often found myself to harbour an unnatural bias in favour of writers, and other figures of artistic merit who I've previously encountered, or as it were, I feel myself drawn towards familiar names and titles over those which I've not before heard of. That's not to say by any means that I feel my taste in literature, and the arts in general, is even remotely refined to the point of being so comprehensive that I have no need to discover new authors and artists. Nor does it necessarily mean that I inherently consider writers special or more credible as artists based on how I already perceive them, or what I previously know about them or their biography.

What is it then, that makes a writer special as an artist?

I'm sure for many people, a book is enjoyable regardless of what they know about the author, but for others it may be what they do know about the writer that influences their enjoyment of the text: or as Barthes put it in his celebrated essay, 'the sway of the Author remains strong'.

There's long been some speculation, for example, regarding whether the author of a certain collection of books concerning a girl who finds herself lost down a rabbit hole, ever possessed less-savoury thoughts about the girl on which the character in question is supposedly based.

Personally, the matter of a writer's personal life and biography are not something I try to let influence my enjoyment of a text and if possible I believe it's probably best to approach a text with no prior knowledge of the author so as to appreciate the text as it stands.