Talk:List of longest novels

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David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is a likely candidate, too, at 1,079 pages. Couldn't find an authoritative source with a word count online, though this guy estimates about 600,000. Mindspillage 00:33, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Added. (Though, of course, you could have added it yourself :-) I'd like to know how long Cryptonomicon is. And Stephenson has been making noises about the whole set of four being "one novel", whether that's retconning or not - David Gerard 20:50, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think 1079 pages make it a likely candidate for longest novel. :) Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is over 1100 pages and it has only 422,000 words / 2,303,000 characters. Alensha 18:57, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Les Miserables and War and Peace are both over three megabytes on Projet Gutenberg, and Count Monte-risto is almost as big. Their paper editions are all over 1000 pages

I don't think Les Miserables is longer than Monte Cristo... I'd love to see some info on their length, though. And does someone have info on Thomas Mann's Joseph and his brothers? Alensha 18:54, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What about Arno Schmidt's "Zettels Traum"? It's 1334 pages in DIN A3, set in three columns, which -- according to the author -- comes to a total of ~5000 "normal" pages. Gschmidl 10:48, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

According to Amazon's page on a secondary work, Zettels Traum is "1334 [folio] pages and over 10 million characters." Longer than A la recherche, apparently. I know nothing about it, though, except that it's really expensive. --zenohockey 20:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Ridiculous category 2 Knickers? 3 James Clavell 4 James Michener 5 More 6 Re-org 7 Published vs unpublished 8 word count limit 9 Neal Stephenson: The Baroque Cycle 10 Tad Williams: Otherland 11 Courtney M. Thomas, Walls of Phantoms

[edit] Ridiculous category

This is a really stupid category, at least as it presently stands. Many of the "novels" listed are actually a number of volumes written and published over many years. "Novel" means "a single book" not a "series of books that have the same theme or characters". Geez. Why not, in that case, list all six of the best-selling books that Allan Drury wrote beginning with Advise and Consent. I recently read all six of them in the order they were published (over about a 15-year period) and they are actually one extended story totalling well over a million words. But I sure wouldn't call all them of them a "novel" -- I'd call them a series of novels! Hayford Peirce 7 July 2005 19:24 (UTC)

It's a tricky one and has to be taken case by case. Mission Earth and Lord of the Rings were written as single works before publication; Cryptonomicon was written then its sequels were written. In Search of Lost Time was published as it was written, but is generally accepted as being a single novel - David Gerard 08:04, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Should exclude novel sequences. Also, please get rid of mildly long novel like Gravity's Rainbow. This category is on the longest novel, not just any long novel. Mandel 10:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem with this criticism is that prior to World War I, many novels were published in serialized or pamphlet form (Don Quixote, Hard Times, etc.). La recherche du temps perdu has been published as seven, nine, and thirteen books, but it was clearly written by Proust as a single work and is considered to be one novel today (cf. Daniel Burt's The Novel 100, which ranks it as the fourth-greatest novel ever written). | MrDarcy (talk) (contribs) 01:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Knickers?

I think we should either remove this entry entirely, since it's clearly not anywhere near as long as the other novels in the article, or move it to the bottom, since its spot at the top appears to imply its supremacy. | MrDarcy (talk) (contribs) 01:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] James Clavell

Shouldn't some of his works be included? I believe Shogun is at least 1600 pages, and I believe Gai-jin is 1800. Tev 05:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] James Michener

Ditto for James Michener. Texas, Hawaii, The Source, Chesapeake and The Covenant were all monsters. They were also extremely challanging for their sheer volume of historical detail. A revamp of this page to list the longest books by rank would be an interesting project, but with the number of novels that have been printed as well as their numerous editions, it may not be entirely practical.

[edit] More

William Gass' The Tunnel? Gaddis' The Recognitions? I have no word count for either, though. --zenohockey 06:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Come to think of it, they're both at least 75,000 words short of 20th place, at least. --zenohockey 20:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-org

Reorganized into three sections:

• Books with a verifiable word or character count
• Books with either an unverified word or character count, or with just a page count
• The two oddballs

I know section #2 tends to legitimize unresearched entries, but I hope some of those will move from section 2 to section 1 over time. | MrDarcy ¡digame! 19:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have reorganized it into word count or character spacing. Also, a few novels clearly does exceed the 450,000 word count though I can't find their exact word count:

Scudery's Clelia

Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers.

The probable final list would run up to nearly 30 novels or so in all languages (so I'm tempted to lift the size limit to 500,000 words). Mandel 17:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Published vs unpublished

I don't see any point to including unpublished novels on a list like this. There's no way a list that includes unpublished works could be comprehensive. Before deleting anything (notably the first entry, which also seems out of place as an illustrated novel and as an entry without even an estimated word count), I thought it best to solicit feedback. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

What about a separate section for unpublished works? --zenohockey 20:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Good thought, but I think it would still violate Wikipedia:Verifiability. One, you couldn't be sure that these were the longest unpublished novels. Two, how would you determine which manuscript was the "official" one for purposes of counting words (or pages or whatever metric)? | Mr. Darcy talk 22:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] word count limit

Currently the limit for inclusion on the list is 450000 words. Should this be increased to 500000 words (or even one million words)? Yes it's a minor detail, but being almost a round figure, 450000 just strikes me as a bit too arbitary and weird and I really cannot figure out any reason for that (except maybe the inclusion of Lord of the Rings... :) ). Skrim 06:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea. I'd prefer 500,000 over 1,000,000, simply because I don't want half the article to be deleted. --zenohockey 15:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

no one objected so it's changed Skrim 07:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neal Stephenson: The Baroque Cycle

I cannot see any reason why The Baroque Cycle should be excluded if A la recherche du temps perdu or Lord of the Rings makes it to the list. Although the work is published in three separate volumes, the storyline continues from book to book - it would be hard to understand Confusion without reading Quicksilver. Hence, I reverted the work to the article. However, Cryptonomicon is not part of the work although there are references to that, it is clearly an independent work. Skrim 07:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Lots of novels work like that, but these are really novel cycles rather than one full novel. The author keeps writing and dragging the series on and on. On the other hand, Lord of the Rings and Proust is clearly conceived as one novel. 203.211.158.253 09:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I've understood that Stephenson had the entire plotline concieved before even the first volume was finished. See for example this interview, which was done between Quicksilver and Confusion. Having read both the Baroque Cycle and LOTR, I would argue they are very similar in regard of being one long story rather than merely episodes that share the characters. Skrim 10:24, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tad Williams: Otherland

I would consider Otherland by Tad Williams to be a definite candiate for this list (consiedrein it has a a page count of about 3500). If Lord Of The Rings is considered a single work this has to be as well. 62.80.40.170 19:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Courtney M. Thomas, Walls of Phantoms

I've removed Thomas's novel for the reasons in my edit summary. As far as I can tell, it's a self-published novel. But if we included all of those...well, there's just no way to reliably rank them. Better stick to ones notable enough to have a WP article, or at least a couple thousand Google hits. --zenohockey 03:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)