# Authors Still Writing Well Into Advanced Age **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2005, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482 "2005-01-07T00:18:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/21 "2005-01-07T05:16:59Z")
If we’re going to start throwing around dead writers - a much more pleasant sport than the image would suggest - then I have to mention P. G. Wodehouse. He lived from 1881-1975 and published books right down to the end. Well past the end, actually, as three novels, three short story collections and a few miscellaneous other books were published posthumously. It can be argued that his style never changed much in all those years either. ---
**Author:** ![porcupine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@porcupine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/porcupine)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/22 "2005-01-07T05:19:10Z")
If you want to count playwrights, I saw a new play by Arthur Miller (born in 1915 according to imdb) last year, and a new Edward Albee production (born in 1928, so a little young for the list) the year before that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/23 "2005-01-07T05:22:59Z")
Now that’s a P.G.-rated simulpost. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/24 "2005-01-07T10:28:35Z")
George MacDonald Fraser, author of the \*\*Flashman \*\* series, is well into his eighties and still going strong: **Flashman On The March** is due out in, well, March, and I’m going to be sleeping outside the bookstore. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/25 "2005-01-07T10:35:41Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > George MacDonald Fraser, author of the \*\*Flashman \*\* series, is well into his eighties and still going strong: **Flashman On The March** is due out in, well, March, and I’m going to be sleeping outside the bookstore. I tell a lie - I assumed because he was a WW2 veteran he was older, but he was born in 1925 or 1926, depending on which sites you believe: he can only have been 19 or 20 when he served in Burma. Never mind, that just means more Flashmans. ---
**Author:** ![h.sapiens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e0b2c6/32.png) [@h.sapiens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/h.sapiens)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/26 "2005-01-07T13:35:44Z")
Studs Terkel is 92 and his last book was published in 2001. As far as I know, he is still active. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/27 "2005-01-07T13:43:07Z")
Although she didn’t write much, Queen Victoria lived so long that we still talk about the Age of Victoria. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/28 "2005-01-07T13:44:21Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > P.G. Wodehouse lived to the age of 94 and was writing Jeeves and Wooster stories practically to the end. > And, as I think I proved fairly well [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=245340&highlight=wodehouse), Jeeves and Wooster seem to have the distinction of being the fictional characters written about by the original author over the longest period: 58 years, from 1916 to 1974. (Wodehouse died in early '75.) As I mentioned in the same thread, Evan Hunter (who also writes as Ed McBain) is still going strong at 78, still writing and publishing, and as he e-mailed to me “I plan to die at age 90 while writing a 87 Precient mystery.” The sheer volume of his works is staggering, and they are also very, very good. He has written an 87 Precient novel called “EXIT,” which will be published after he dies, and will be his last. I honesty think he will break Wodehouse’s record. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/29 "2005-01-07T14:08:16Z")
At the other end of things Norman Maclean didn’t write his first work. the brilliant, _A River Runs Through It_ until he was in his 70s. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/30 "2005-01-07T15:16:57Z")
George Seldes died at age 104, while working on a revised edition of his book _The Great Thoughts_. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/31 "2005-01-07T15:20:52Z")
Henry Roth may have had the longest writer’s block ever, with a 59 and a half year gap between his first novel and his second. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/32 "2005-01-07T16:09:22Z")
Jule Styne’s last musical premiered when he was 88. ---
**Author:** ![YoudNeverGuess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a587f6/32.png) [@YoudNeverGuess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YoudNeverGuess)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/33 "2005-01-07T17:14:26Z")
I _wish_ I could remember the guy’s name now for this thread but I read an article in the Irish Times a while ago that featured a writer who had just published his first novel at the age of 84 or something. I was impressed. Don’t know if it was a great novel but still. Gives hope to all of us who say ‘I must write that novel some day’ 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482/34 "2005-01-07T18:06:52Z")
There have been _many_ great writers who did not get serious until middle age or later. (One of the best novels ever written about the south, for example, was Olive Ann Burn’s _Cold Sassy Tree_, which was not even begun until the author was in her mid fifties.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-still-writing-well-into-advanced-age/283482.md?page=1)