Forget the fawning over the literary wunderkind—authors like Bukowski and Burroughs proved that maturity counts.

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Raymond Chandler

It seems like the literary world is forever in awe of the young writers, the wunderkinds, the 20 under 40, the five under 35, the 30 under 30. It makes sense, of course—there's something extra impressive about pulling off a great feat, literary or otherwise, when you're young.

But what about those authors who got started a little later in life? There's something pretty impressive about that too. I recently discovered Bloom, a cool website dedicated to the discussion of writers who published their first major work at age 40 or later. Inspired, I decided to poke about a bit on the topic myself. You might be surprised at some of the late bloomers on the list:

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