| When asked “What is the longest novel ever written?” most people instantly think of the thickest books they encountered in their youth — War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, or The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. They will be surprised to know that these epics are mere cottages compared to the skyscrapers of literature. Not one of the three aforementioned novels breaks into the top ten list of the longest novels ever written. The longest of the three, War and Peace, is 1,440 pages long containing about 561,093 words (English translation, Oxford World Classic edition). Compare that to the longest novel ever written — French author Madeleine de Scudéry’s Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, published in 10 volumes (13,095 pages) containing almost two million words. The length and weight of these novels will send readers scrambling for an ebook version. Show
Not surprisingly, most of these novels are not well-known or found in most high school or college curricula — for obvious reasons. Technically, the longest novel ever written originally in English and in one volume is Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady published in 1748. The British author, who was also a printer and publisher, had the freedom of writing circuitously since he was, in effect, self-published. It’s almost a shame he wasn’t paid by the word, though. Nevertheless, some 267 years later, his lengthy epistolary novel is still in print in various paperback editions as well as ebook editions. Richardson would be thrilled. Despite its obscurity in the West, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong is the most widely read novel in China, where it is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature (alongside Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber). Moreover, Guanzhong’s impact on Chinese literature is compared to that of William Shakespeare’s impact on English literature. Bookshelf presents the list of the top ten longest novels ever written — excluding, of course, multi-volume series (e.g., Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling). 1. Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus or Cyrus the Great (1649-53) by Madeleine de Scudéry (13,095 pages, 10 volumes, 1,954,300 French words) 2. Gordana (2007) by Marija Juric Zagorka (8,768 pages, 12 volumes, 1,400,000 Coratian words) 3. À la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27) by Marcel Proust (3,031 pages, 7 volumes, 1,267,069 French words) 4. Zettels Traum (1970) by Arno Schmidt (1,334 pages, 1,100,000 German words) 5. Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1748) by Samuel Richardson (1,534 pages, 984,870 English words) 6. Poor Fellow My Country (1975) by Xavier Herbert (1,463 pages, 852,000 English words) 7. Women and Men (1987) by Joseph McElroy (1,192 pages, 850,000 English words) 8. Sironia, Texas (1952) by Madison Cooper (1,731 pages, 2 volumes, 840,000 English words) 9. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th century) by Luo Guanzhong (2,340 pages, 4 volumes, 800,000 Chinese to English translation by Moss Roberts in 1991) If you’re a big reader then you’ve probably read a mixture of very short and very long books in your lifetime. And you’ve probably wondered how long some of your favourite stories are. But because time sometimes slows down or speeds up when we’re engrossed in a good story, it’s very hard to compare the length of different stories by reflecting on our experiences. The number of pages also doesn’t help much, as publishers use different typefaces, page sizes, font sizes, etc. The ultimate measure of a story’s size is its wordcount, however, so the literary geeks here at Foster Grant have put together a list of many of the most popular books and short stories in history for you. Make sure you take a look at our range of reading glasses if you need a little help reading your next book! What’s the Difference Between a Novel, a Novella, and a Short Story?First off, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between a novel and a novella, a short story and a piece of flash fiction.
Word Counts in Different GenresThere are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to what word count a novel in a particular genre should be. However, there are averages and rough word counts expected by publishers. Of course, figures differ depending on which publisher you ask, so the following figures are merely approximations derived from various sources.
Literary Fiction Literary fiction is a slightly difficult genre to define sometimes, as it tends to contain a mixture of all genres. One thing that seems to connect all books considered ‘literary’ is that they are all considered to be intelligently written. However, there are intelligent books in all genres, so literary fiction is really just the upper echelons of books considered ‘good’ by revered critics and academics.
Epic Literary Fiction NovelsEpic novels are works of fiction that are 110,000 words or over.
Fantasy BooksFantasy readers usually expect all their books to be epic. So, most of the famous fantasy novels are over 110,000 words – although there are a few exceptions… Is War and Peace the longest book in the world?War and Peace is a very long book, but it is not recognized as the longest book. At 1,225 pages and 587,287 words, it's definitely a contender, but the recognized 'longest book' is Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, which as 1.5 million words.
How long should it take to read War and Peace?According to the graphic, it takes an average of 32.63 hours to read Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace and 60.23 hours to read the entire Harry Potter series of books.
Is War and Peace longer than the Bible?In honor of finishing War and Peace, I made a list of the longest novels I've read (the longest book is, of course, the Bible at 788,000 words).
How many pages long is War and Peace?War and Peace. |
How many words in war and peace
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