What's the oldest age some important writer started to write?

>>8964650
tolstoy

Penelope Fitzgerald comes to mind - in her early 60s when she got started.

>>8964650
Yasushi Inoue

Wallace Stevens published his first poetry collection at 44

Theodor Fontane

>>8964650

Henri-Pierre Roché famously didn't publish his first novel, Jules et Jim, until the age of 74. He'd write one more after that, also quite good, 'Two English Girls.'

Of course, the majority of his fame is indebted to Francois Truffaut's adaptations of both of his works, but hey, its proof that we needn't frame life into intro/18-40/outro

Bukowski's first novel was published when he was 50.
He was a failed poet before that though.

Alasdair Gray was in his late 40s by the time his first was published, he had been writing it for 30 years though.

Burroughs was like 40 when his first was published.

Farts and poop.

Well, it should be noted that even Milton didn't really start writing Paradise Lost until he was around 50. Of course, he had been totally engrossed in the study of the Classics from the time he was 12, and he wrote his first truly great poem (Lycidas) when he was about 30, but still.

Flaubert was pretty old when he published Bovary.

Of course, he wasn't exactly doing nothing before that

Whitman obviously

>>8965274
He was 36 when LOG was first published, I wouldn't say that's extraordinarily old. I feel like a lot of good writers only publish beginning in their late 20s/early 30s

>>8965216

>Of course, he wasn't exactly doing nothing before that

This is the main takeaway from this thread. This thread is replete with examples of people who were literary late bloomers, but in almost all of their cases, you better believe they were writing and usually at least trying to get published before they finally got any lifetime recognition/acclaim. So lets eliminate right now any potential for these names being anything like fuel to add to your procrastinatory flames ("eh, I'll just start writing my 'In Search of Lost Times' when I'm in my late thirties, just like Proust!"). Work at it continually, and never stop interacting with the world around you