Hey, Jax Stacks readers! Looking for "A book by a debut author over 50"? Check out these authors who picked up the pen after the age of 50. From Blixen to Bukowski, it's proof that some things are worth the wait.
Bram Stoker wrote the horror classic Dracula at age 50.
Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stoker’s Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author's mother, who wrote her son: 'It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror.' A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil, ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
Laura Ingalls Wilder began the classic Little House series at age 65.
Little House on the Prairie (1935) records the family's move to Kansas. On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937) describes the family's move to Minnesota. By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939) records the family's move to South Dakota, as do the final three books in the series: The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie (1941), and These Happy Golden Years (1943), which ends with her marriage to Almanzo Wilder.
Raymond Chandler is a mystery and pulp fiction writer who wrote The Big Sleep at age 50.
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out, and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse . . .
Frank McCourt is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote Angela’s Ashes at age 66.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." - Frank McCourt
English author Richard Adams wrote the enduring favorite Watership Down at age 52.
Watership Down is one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey from their native Sandleford Warren, through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, and toward the dream of a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.
Anna Sewell is an English author who wrote the children’s classic Black Beauty at age 57.
The dramatic and heartwarming tale is told by the magnificent black horse himself, from his idyllic days on a country squire's estate to his harsh fate as a London cab horse and his merciful rescue by two kindly old ladies.Filled with vivid anecdotes about animal intelligence, the novel derives a special magic from the love of all creatures, great and small, apparent on every page. But the book's lasting impact comes from its descriptions of a human society struggling to find the goodness within itself and its plea for kindness to all creatures.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas is an environmental activist and author who wrote The Everglades: River of Grass at age 57.
Before 1947, when Marjory Stoneman Douglas named the Everglades a "river of grass", most people considered the area a vast and worthless swamp. Her book brought the world's attention to the need to preserve the Everglades, a unique environment that is home to countless animal and plant species.
American author Sue Monk Kidd wrote Secret Life of Bees at age 54.
Set in South Carolina during the tumultuous summer of 1964, The Secret Life of Bees also ushered young Lily Owens, a girl transformed by the power and divinity of the female spirit, into the canon of modern-day heroines. Lily and her fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother" escape the racism of their hometown and find refuge with an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, whose world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna is mesmerizing.
Karen Blixen is a Danish author, known in the United States as Isak Dinesen, who wrote the biographical novel Out of Africa at age 52.
In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives; of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom; of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her; of primitive festivals; of big game that were her near neighbors, lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes, and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful.
Annie Proulx is a Pulitzer prize-winning author whose works include The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain who published her first novel at age 56.
The story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys who share a small tent while working as herders and camp tenders during a summer spent on a range far above the tree line. They fall into a relationship that at first seems solely sexual but then reveals itself to be something more. Both men marry and have families, but over the course of many years and frequent separations they find their relationship becomes the most important thing in both their lives, and they do anything they can to maintain it.
Charles Bukowski become known as a poet during the 1960s. His debut novel, Post Office, hit shelves in 1971 when the author was 51 years old. Post Office is based on his experiences as a letter filing clerk in a Los Angeles Post Office. Post Office would be the first of six novels the author would release.
Post Office is an account of Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski. It covers the period of Chinaski's life from the mid-1950s to his resignation from the United States Postal Service in 1969, interrupted only by a brief hiatus during which he supported himself by gambling at horse races.
