Phil Mickelson Never Met

Great American classic novels

Word count is one of those things new writers worry about but deny worrying about because we’re not supposed to be worrying about it. According to Wikipedia’s entry on word count, the typical word count of a novel is at least 80, 000 words. I’ve heard through the publishing world grapevine than most agents and editors will generally take a query for a first novel more seriously if the word count is between 80, 000 and 100, 000.

Instead of sleeping, I compiled in an Excel sheet novels I read growing up. They’re mostly classics because those are the only ones where word count is easily obtained. More contemporary fiction would require more digging. I wouldn’t say I personally love every one of these books, but I would regard them as classics, as great novels in themselves, even if the particular author wasn’t that impressive of a writer.

Author — Book Title — Word Count
(in case it wasn’t obvious)

Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country 83, 774
Alice Walker The Color Purple 66, 556
Amy Tan The Kitchen God’s Wife 159, 276
Joy Luck Club 91, 419
Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged 561, 996
The Fountainhead 311, 596
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 145, 092
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 135, 420
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders 138, 087
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 107, 945
Erich Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front 61, 922
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises 67, 707
Frank Norris McTeague 112, 737
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment 211, 591
George Eliot Middlemarch 316, 059
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four 88, 942
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird 99, 121
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin 166, 622
Henry David Thoreau Walden 114, 634
Honore de Balzac Pere Goriot 87, 846
J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 73, 404
James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans 145, 469
Jane Austen Persuasion 87, 978
John Knowles A Separate Peace 56, 787
John Steinback The Grapes of Wrath 169, 481
East of Eden 225, 395
Joseph Heller Catch-22 174, 269
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five 49, 459
Welcome to the Monkey House 99, 560
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 587, 287
Margaret Atwood Alias Grace 157, 665
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huck Finn 109, 571
Life on the Mississippi 127, 776
Maxine Hong Kingston Woman Warrior 70, 957
Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being 85, 199
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter 63, 604
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray 78, 462
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 46, 118
The Martian Chronicles 64, 768
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon 92, 400
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway 63, 422
William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 56, 695
William Golding Lord of the Flies 59, 900

The Stats:

Average word count of the Great Novels is 136, 604 words. That’s like the literary institution’s recommended word count for first novels plus a long novella! But the arithmetic mean isn’t very helpful here because we’ve got some doozies on this list.

Median word count is 99, 341 words. That’s longer than Wikipedia’s estimation of the typical novel length, but just about right as a target word count for budding novel writers.

Longest novel on the list is Tolstoy’s War and Peace (surprise, surprise) at 587, 287 words. Note that Ayn Rand’s cult classic Atlas Shrugged isn’t that far behind, at 561, 996 words.

Shortest novel on the list is Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, one of my personal favorites, at 46, 118 words. Most of Hemingway’s novels make pretty slim books too.

Word count on the Bible, Old and New combined: 774, 776 words according to Source A and 788, 280 words in the King James according to Source B. But the Bible’s word count isn’t relevant here because first of all, it’s not by one author unless you want to go there with me and say it’s God and in that case, well, it’s God, so yeah.

Then again, considering the oeuvres of certain writers, like John Steinbeck, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, and even Amy Tan, they’ve already written way more than 700, 000-ish words.

Need A Life:

I can’t believe I just sat here and compiled that list. By the way, I came up with each book off the top of my head, either by author name or by title. I wrecked my brains from the excursion. I need to go do something like shop for shoes or eat ice cream now…. Ugh.

Word count on past PEN/Faulkner Award winners:

Chabon, Michael The Amazing Adventures… 216, 020
Banks, Russell Cloudsplitter 260, 742
Franzen, Jonathan The Corrections 196, 774
Cooper, Susan The Dark Is Rising 82, 143
Danticat, Edwidge The Dew Breaker 60, 082
Phillips, Caryl A Distant Shore 103, 090
Packer, ZZ Drinking Coffee Elsewhere 68, 410
Robinson, Marilynne Gilead 84, 845
Cunningham, Michael The Hours 54, 243
Kennedy, William Ironweed 67, 606
McMurtry, Larry Lonesome Dove 365, 712
Kingsolver, Barbara The Poisonwood Bible 177, 679
Guterson, David Snow Falling on Cedars 138, 098
Hegi, Ursula Stones from the River 197, 517
Canales, Viola The Tequila Worm 42, 715
Jin, Ha Waiting 89, 297
Traffic stats
Source: indefeasible.wordpress.com
RELATED FACTS
Share this Post

Related posts

American classic Novels Literature

American classic Novels Literature

MARCH 19, 2024

The Space Merchants | More Than Human | The Long Tomorrow | The Shrinking Man | Double Star | The Stars My Destination |…

Read More
Great American Classics Books

Great American Classics Books

MARCH 19, 2024

These four landmark novels of nineteenth-century American literature have gained a permanent place in our culture as great…

Read More