Midlist authors and first-world problems in English fiction

Reading, and consequently publishing, in England seems to differ from that in the U.S., as in England there always - that is, for at least the last century - seems to be an endless supply of "mid-list" authors. In America, it seems to be all or nothing: Lots of attention to first-time novelists and, for those few who emerge from that pack w/ best-sellers, lots of support for an attention to the best-selling authors, but little or no publishing patience or nurturing of the midlist: those authors who reliably turn out a novel every two years or so, maintain modest but not blockbuster sales, get good reviews from time to time but rarely win a prize or major recognition. These guys still exist in England, and they have their loyal followers and remain afloat, and surprisingly many are still in print or at least on library shelves. At suggestion of from AF who found this novel mentioned on some list or other of the 100 best books of, what?, the 20th century? All time?, I've started reading Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart (1938), and so far it seems to be classic British mid-list: No new ground, no truly distinct authorial voice or style, but an intelligent novel about what today we call "first-world problems": The central character, Anna, living in a beautiful house on Regents Park with a large staff of servants, evidently from a wealthy family though her husband (they're in their 30s) runs a successful ad agency, has taken in, for at least a year, her husband's now orphaned half-sister, Portia, and is finding P to b a troubled teen, with a truly messy room, ill-mannered, and sometimes flirtatious with guests, indifferent toward her schooling, and the only friend she's found thus far in England is another social misfit at her school. Horrors! In other words, she's a typical teenager, and Anna can't really manage her. The "crisis" that gets the narrative under way occurs as Anna is poling around in Portia's messy room and finds that P has been keeping a diary, which contains caustic comments about her brother and Anna. Well, first of all it's outrageous that she's violated this young woman's privacy (she has no cause for alarm about P's well-being or safety) and further, what's the big deal? She's not going to publish her diary - and of course this novel predates social media by about 80 years - so just leave it alone and get on w/ your life. But something about the presence of this young woman truly disturbs Anna; how this will or might develop in a plot w/ serious stakes, we shall see.