But the author isn't Martin; he is the playwright Martin became, a mature writer who can retrieve the past and sort it out.

The book lights up a time when many of the best movies were fashioned by mature writers and directors, some with a sense of mission.

Certainly this heavily academic language is not that of a youth but a mature writer steeped in such concerns and narrated from a future perspective.

It is the fierce, fully realized work of a mature writer, a writer working at the very height of her powers.

The early to mid fifties saw Thompson reaching his stride as a mature writer.

Her title anticipated the mature writer's preoccupation with restless, dissatisfied women who yearn for freedom and test the boundaries of Victorian social (and literary) conventions.

It might be a demented mature writer who hasn't been able to get a single word published even without the demands of an arduous second career.

Such is generally the case when a mature writer hits upon a genuinely new subject.

To deal with this "horror," Mr. Sullivan writes, "mature writers pour another cup of coffee and buckle in."

"Remember," says Frank Conroy, "we're talking about a mature writer working at the peak of his power."