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)

On the other hand, the most common paperback printing of Atlas Shrugged is under 1100 pages. It's just printed at something like five-point font with margins about an eighth of an inch, allowing about 650k words to be crammed into those pages. As such, page count is not really a reliable measure. - Apotheon (talk) 03:46, 24 May 2008 (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)

[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)

There's plenty of fiction published with vanity presses or online; that the editions are disreputable doesn't make them unofficial. There's a 918,000-word professional wrestling fan-novel up at FanFiction.net, for example. -- 60.242.98.163 05:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Darger's manuscript is not only unpublished but also is publicly unavailable. Page count and estimated word totals are based on information that cannot be veried by third parties. Therefore, I have moved this one under the controversial heading. Ceyx106lucifer (talk) 00:10, 30 March 2008 (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)

If A La Recherche is up there, then so should the Baroque Cycle. I can't see any difference in the way the two were published and intended. Famous Mortimer 14:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The story doesn't even occur in chronological order. The first book intercuts a character's experience at Cambridge (a prologue to books 2-5 in volumes 1 and 2), with his returning to England 40 years later (a prologue to books 6-8 in volume 3). That's a pretty clear indication of a single narrative, as it Neal Stephenson's assertion that he only called it a cycle to prevent people from erroneously labeling it a a trilogy, simply because it was published in three parts. On the other hand Stephenson also states that he would be happy to view it as eight separate novels, just as much as one single one. It runs, incidentally to 2,628 pages and I estimate at least 1.1 million words.

[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)

[edit] Stephen King, "The Dark Tower" series

I think this should be considered for addition to the list. It's a single, unified work across seven published novels, and my rough estimate to its word count puts it close to or above one million words. Considering King's popularity, I'm surprised it's not on the list.

This is definitely stylistically different to the other novel cycles up there though. I'd say no. Famous Mortimer 14:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] comparison base text needed

This is an interesting article, even if it does have a trivia night quality. People will have heard of most of these books, few of them will have been read. It would be good idea to use the word count of a popular large novel to compare with these works. I would suggest "Lord of the Rings" or the soon to be complete cycle of the Harry Potter books. The Bible (tho it is not a novel) could also be used. And no, I don't think the DOS Manual would do nicely. Then each entry could say something like Novel X, 2.5 LOTRs. As it is, few people know what "a million words" is. Haven't got the time to do this now, but commend anyone who wants to have a go.

Well, how long is Lord of the Rings anyway? 81.101.47.164 (talk) 21:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Quick points.

1.There is no need to list number of characters. We're not all paid up geek boys here, and the uneven mix of characters, words, pages and door stop status seems to have no rhyme or reason. 2. I note that the odd statement that no one knows how many words were found in Henry Danger's room remain - we are told the number of notebooks that were found, but the number of words are said to be anywhere from "millions" to "tens of millions". For an article aimed at those who have an overpowering urge to count things, this is an absurd piece of innumeracy. There is no way there could be as much variation as this. Just take an average page, determine the number of words, estimate the number of pages and do the simple arithmetic. How could the estimates vary by orders of magnitude? Myles325a 01:27, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] L'Astrée

Hello,

It seems that all these fell short of L'Astrée: 60 volumes, 5399 pages. Yann 19:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

We'd need a word count to include it, but I doubt it'd be no. 1: Artamene covers 13,000 pages, Vivian Girls 15,000. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EamonnPKeane (talk • contribs) 23:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removing Count of Monte Cristo

Removed Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo. Using word count on a word processor on the book, it turned out to be 470470 number of words - which falls short of the 500,000 words limit set by the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.14.134.247 (talk) 05:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pages vs. Characters

I believe that pages should not determine the longest novel because of the possiblility of a larger or smaller font. Characters, on the other hand, are better for determining length because it tells you that there is more context, rather than pages. 1bevingtonco (talk) 22:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vikrim seth vs Ayn Rand

Vikrim Seth's entry says that the book is the longest book published in the English language since clarrissa. But Ayn Rand's book is listed to be longer. Can anybody clarify? --129.67.115.253 (talk) 08:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inquiry for "Battlefield Earth"

Admittedly, it has been a while since I reviewed the Battlefield Earth article, I do recall at one time it did have a claim in it's introduction stating "one the longest novels ever written". Now the claim is gone but having read the book, I think it is worthy of being in this article.--Kevin586 (talk) 20:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sir Charles Grandison

Sir Charles Grandison by our good friend Samuel Richardson probably has a place on this list. I have a copy in front of me now that weighs in at 1599 pages. When I have more time I'll do a word count. Spamguy (talk) 16:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I count about 700,000 words. This is unsourced, despite the horrible irony that this number is based on a print source. This book is obscure enough that no one else has bothered to evaluate its size, though it's received a little literary analysis now and then. Spamguy (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Book Cycles vs. Conceived as a single story

How do you differentiate? At least three science fiction/fantasy book series with a single pre-conceived storyline comes to mind: Void Trilogy, Wheel of Time, Chung Kuo.

I can see the difference between these and Lord of the Rings - but only because trilogy/single stories filling more than volume was (afaik) unheard of at the time. (iirc the publisher took a chance publishing it that way).

Would it be fair to conclude (if the above is correct), that it would be unlikely for any contemporary publisher to print a novel that could go into this list, simply because the preferred method now is to cut novels up? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Add: none of these can be seen as Novel sequences btw. (in case it wasn't clear ;-). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cerebus? Really?

Do we really need Cerebus in here? There are probably hundreds of graphic novels with a higher page count than Cerebus. For example, Savage Dragon, Kochi-Kame, Inuyasha etc. And many of them would be just as much a 'single story' as Cerebus. However there is a lot more story in one page of writing than one page of comic book, and there is really no way to come up with a 'ratio'. Maybe you could have a paragraph about comics in general having high page counts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.116.135 (talk) 06:15, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Li Zicheng

Unfortunately the link to Li Zicheng is currently to an article that is a mini-biography of the historical figure, and does not even mention the recent historical novel that the link should refer to. Does anyone have adequate knowledge of this work to improve the situation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elroch (talk • contribs) 09:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Blah Story

Can I get some support here for the fact that "The Blah Story" belongs in the controversial section? This is based on the fact that it consists of nothing but repititions of the word "blah" intersperced with grammatical particles. I assume the word "novel" implies "plot", or at least "content" or "more than two dozen unique words". If there are no objections, I'll move it back there at some point in the future. QVanillaQ (talk) 14:54, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Clearly a stunt. --zenohockey (talk) 19:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)