Tessa Hadley, author of After the Funeral and Other Stories, did not have a book published until age 46. In interviews, she has been frank about the fact that her first four or five novels, written in her twenties and long since discarded, didn't measure up. "I am so glad I didn't publish a debut novel at 25, because [the books] were dead. I would have loved it at the time, but they were terrible," she said in 2022. She told the Los Angeles Review of Books, "I was a slow developer and … didn't have a strong, forceful sense of who I was and what my authority was and what I had to say. That took a long time to grow, and I came into it late, and now I don't regret that. I'm almost glad that I had that 20 years of trying and failing … it might be good for you in the long run."

It can seem that young debut authors garner all the attention, with prestigious lists like Granta's decadal "Best of Young British Novelists" and the National Book Foundation's annual "5 Under 35," ...