Best Old Novelists

Responding to the various Best young novelist lists, the Times Literary Supplement prepared a list of writers who had written their first novels at age 40 or more. The age given in brackets is the age when they first had a novel published.

Mary Wesley (70)
Penelope Fitzgerald (61)
E. Annie Proulx (53)
Raymond Chandler (51)
Damon Runyon (48)
Alasdair Gray (47)
Alan Paton (45)
Henry Miller (43)
William Gass (42)
Marcel Proust (42)
George Eliot (40)
Katherine Anne Porter (40)
William Golding (40)
William Cooper (40)