This year's Man Booker prizewinner is the youngest ever, but she's far from being the first author to make an early impression. Here are a few earlier starts
Ahead in their time … Mary Shelley, Eleanor Catton, Arthur Rimbaud. Photograph: Corbin/Martin Godwin
Work: Dr Faustus (c.1589)
Author: Christopher Marlowe
Age: 25
Plot: German don who moonlights as magician sells soul in exchange for boundless knowledge, long-haul travel and night with Helen of Troy
Rewards: Biography murky, but hit probably paid for more "tobacco and boys" and secured playwright/spy juicier overseas missions as Elizabethan 007
Legacy: Every comparison of a deal to a Faustian pact – between politicians and spin doctors/bankers/generals, say, or rock stars and managers – descends from Marlowe's play, although Goethe's cheeky muscling in on same legend means he often gets credit instead
Work: The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Age: 25
Plot: Drippy toff decides suicide only solution as fanciable local women all spoken for
Rewards: Ample – wins aristocratic patron who ennobles him (hence "von") and makes him political protégé
Legacy: Ultimate template for all stories of neurotic, sensitive youths. Results in copycat suicides and what may be world's first fan fiction (in it, Werther's gun doesn't fire). Adored by Napoleon and kickstarts German romanticism. Werther's Originals not thought to be connected
Work: Frankenstein (1818)
Author: Mary Shelley
Age: 19
Plot: Bonkers boffin manufactures monster
Rewards: Calling card for career (after PB Shelley's death) as prototypical north London lady of letters
Legacy: The suitably scandalous mother of science fiction and horror, though after her the twin genres were taken over by geeks. Hollywood and British film industry both so indebted they should have named a studio or Oscar category after her, but may have been embarrassed at owing so much to a teenage girl
Work: The Pickwick Papers (1837)
Author: Charles Dickens, as Boz
Age: 25
Plot: Jolly chaps have jolly adventures
Rewards: Secures bigger and better magazine deal for next book and is able to use own name.
Legacy: Pickwick Papers itself perhaps led to PG Wodehouse and Three Men in a Boat. Later, darker, non-episodic novels have been more often filmed, however, right up to recent works by Jonathan Franzen, Thomas Pynchon and Donna Tartt.
Work: Woyzeck (1837)
Author: Georg Büchner
Age: 23
Plot: Bullied squaddie kills sweetheart
Rewards: None, as the author died with his masterpiece unfinished. But does lend his name to a major German book prize
Legacy: Too radical for stuffy 19th century, but later inspires expressionist drama and cinema, and also underpins absurdism. Less happily, Woyzeck becomes byword for grim, expensive dates or family outings thanks to Berg's atonal opera version of Büchner's fractured narrative
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Author: Christopher Marlowe
Age: 25
Plot: German don who moonlights as magician sells soul in exchange for boundless knowledge, long-haul travel and night with Helen of Troy
Rewards: Biography murky, but hit probably paid for more "tobacco and boys" and secured playwright/spy juicier overseas missions as Elizabethan 007
Legacy: Every comparison of a deal to a Faustian pact – between politicians and spin doctors/bankers/generals, say, or rock stars and managers – descends from Marlowe's play, although Goethe's cheeky muscling in on same legend means he often gets credit instead
Work: The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Age: 25
Plot: Drippy toff decides suicide only solution as fanciable local women all spoken for
Rewards: Ample – wins aristocratic patron who ennobles him (hence "von") and makes him political protégé
Legacy: Ultimate template for all stories of neurotic, sensitive youths. Results in copycat suicides and what may be world's first fan fiction (in it, Werther's gun doesn't fire). Adored by Napoleon and kickstarts German romanticism. Werther's Originals not thought to be connected
Work: Frankenstein (1818)
Author: Mary Shelley
Age: 19
Plot: Bonkers boffin manufactures monster
Rewards: Calling card for career (after PB Shelley's death) as prototypical north London lady of letters
Legacy: The suitably scandalous mother of science fiction and horror, though after her the twin genres were taken over by geeks. Hollywood and British film industry both so indebted they should have named a studio or Oscar category after her, but may have been embarrassed at owing so much to a teenage girl
Work: The Pickwick Papers (1837)
Author: Charles Dickens, as Boz
Age: 25
Plot: Jolly chaps have jolly adventures
Rewards: Secures bigger and better magazine deal for next book and is able to use own name.
Legacy: Pickwick Papers itself perhaps led to PG Wodehouse and Three Men in a Boat. Later, darker, non-episodic novels have been more often filmed, however, right up to recent works by Jonathan Franzen, Thomas Pynchon and Donna Tartt.
Work: Woyzeck (1837)
Author: Georg Büchner
Age: 23
Plot: Bullied squaddie kills sweetheart
Rewards: None, as the author died with his masterpiece unfinished. But does lend his name to a major German book prize
Legacy: Too radical for stuffy 19th century, but later inspires expressionist drama and cinema, and also underpins absurdism. Less happily, Woyzeck becomes byword for grim, expensive dates or family outings thanks to Berg's atonal opera version of Büchner's fractured narrative
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