This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Oscar Wilde said ‘with age comes wisdom’, but it seems age might come with a great work of literature, too. According to bestselling author Joanna Trollope, writers will create their best works after the age of 35, when life has "knocked them about a bit".
Speaking at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai this weekend, Trollope emphasised that she did not mean to sound unkind to younger writers, but said they would produce better work after their 35th birthday, when they had experienced both pain and joy.
This might come as news to the likes of Eleanor Catton, who won the Man Booker Prize aged just 28 in 2013 for The Luminaries. Or to Hannah Kent, whose novel Burial Rites was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction last year when she was also 28. And let’s not forget that Eimear McBride won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction with her debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, which she wrote at 27.
So, before you slip into a hole of youthful writerly despair over Trollope’s comments, we present to you 10 classic and modern female authors, who wrote hugely successful novels before they reached the age of 35.
1. Jane Austen
Jane Austen was just 19 when she wrote Sense and Sensibility. 19! She paid to have the book published in 1811 and also paid the publisher a commission on sales – the cost of which was more than a third of Austen's annual household income of £460.
2. Mary Shelley
Another young author, Mary Shelley, became aware of Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments, on her travels through Europe in 1814. Four years later, Frankenstein was published. Shelley was just 21.
3. Emily Brontë
Emily wrote her only known novel, Wuthering Heights, at the age of 29. The book was originally published under the pen name Ellis Bell in 1847, a year before her death, and to this day appears on lists charting the nation’s best-loved novels.
Plath began writing her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in 1961 when she was 29. It was published two years later, a month before she died, and is widely regarded as a modern classic. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems, too.
5. Zadie Smith
White Teeth was the subject of a bidding war before it was even finished; the auction for her unfinished novel occurred while Smith was still a student a Cambridge in the late '90s. It was published in 2000 when she was 25, and went on to win numerous awards.
6. Sophie Kinsella
Sophie Kinsella’s The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, meanwhile, was published in the same year as White Teeth by Zadie Smith, when Sophie was 31. The first of seven Shopaholic novels, the bestselling series became immensely popular, with the first two books adapted for film. The latest installment, Shopaholic to the Stars, was published just last year.
7. Veronica Roth
Veronica Roth sold the publishing rights to her Divergent series before she graduated from college in 2010 and sold the film rights mid-March 2011 before the first book even hit the shelves. She is 26 years old and worth an estimated £11 million. We’d say that’s pretty successful.
8. Evie Wyld
We’ve already mentioned the likes of Hannah Kent and Eimear McBride from the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014. Evie Wyld’s All The Birds, Singing – published when she was 32 – made the Baileys Prize longlist and went on to win the 2014 European Union Prize for Literature.
9. Jessie Burton
Jessie Burton's novel The Miniaturist, a literary thriller set in 17th Century Amsterdam, was one of the huge publishing success stories of last year. Not only did it become the bestselling literary debut hardback of the decade, it was named Waterstones Book of the Year and Burton won the new writer of the year prize at the National Book Awards. Did we mention that Jessie is 32?
10. Samantha Shannon
“When a debut author signs a massive six-figure book deal with a publisher, has the film rights bought almost immediately and is likened to J.K. Rowling, it would be wise to pay attention. Especially when that author is barely in her twenties,” said Amanda of Samantha Shannon back in 2013 just after the release of The Bone Season. The author was 21 at the time. Now the second book in the series – Shannon has been signed up for seven in total – has been published in hardback and her success shows no signs of slowing down.
In conclusion, if there’s anything publishing has taught us, it’s that age has no bearing on your success. You’re never too young or too old to start.