I often hear an author feeling that X or Y is their most important work, but readers find X or Y more or less impenetrable, or in any case vastly prefer some other item in the author's oeuvre. That always gives me pause! What is it that the author isn't seeing or understanding? Or what is it that they *are* seeing, but can't convey to readers, and why?

--Not quite what you're talking about here, but I feel like it could have been, if things had been allowed to go the way T.H. White wanted.