You see the same thing today with popular modern authors.
In 100+ year time the niche writers who spend years reworking their prose are still going to be niche, while the ultra popular authors who had a cultural impact and dozens of published books will be studied even if at the time they wrote they were trashed as being "not real literature" or "pop fantasy".
I severely severely doubt things like King Killer Chronicle or anything Jensin or Abercrombie has wrote will endure as much as Sanderson. This makes people seethe.
A more recent example of this is Asimov, part of the reason everyone knows him isn't that his writing was particular great. He just wrote a lot, that a lot of people liked. It was pulp Sci fi, but it's defined discussions generations later.
Imo Faulkner and Joyce are vastly overrated by people obsessed with prose, to the point that they fail to communicate their stories adequately. They get trotted out by English literature teachers, and frankly speaking snobs, and there are some cool uses of the prose in I. E. The Sound and The Fury, but I wouldn't reread it and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone to actually read. It just wasn't a particularly interesting book aside from the curious abuse of the language.
To get even pulpier sometimes I pick up a 40k novel and churn through it because it's fun. It doesn't demand me think much about it, it's just telling me a story in a universe I'm familiar with.