They say that everyone has one novel in them (though they don't mention that it's often a crap one), but just how long does that masterpiece have to be before it counts as a novel and not just a very long short story?

In the spirit of scientific enquiry I counted the words in a number of well known classic novels (and some other works) and here's the results. Charles Dickens rather stands out in the verbosity stakes, but everyone knows why that is*, but other than that, my gut feeling that 100,000 words and upwards was about the mark wasn't that far out. Generous, even, if it's tightly written.

So here it is (to the nearest '000): the novel word-count list.....

	Title	Author	Word Count
	Black Beauty	Anna Sewell	60,000
	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens	357,000
	Dracula	Bram Stoker	161,000
	Gullivers Travels	Jonathan Swift	104,000
	Ivanhoe	Sir Walter Scott	193,000
	Jane Eyre	Charlotte Bronte	187,000
	(the) Jungle Book	Rudyard Kipling	51,000
	Lorna Doone	R D Blackmore	273,000
	Man of Property	John Galsworthy	111,000
	Pilgrims Progress	Jonh Bunyan	60,000
	(The) Thirty Nine Steps	John Buchan	41,000
	Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stephenson	68,000
	(The) Water Babies	Charles Kingsley	68,000
	Wind In The Willows	Kenneth Grahame	59,000
	Wizard of Oz	L Frank Baum	39,000
	Wuthering Heights	Emily Bronte	116,000

Other Works
	Title	Author	Word Count
	Julius Caesar	William Shakespeare	19,000
	Operas(Average of 14)	Gilbert & Sullivan	12,000

* Dickens' work was published in weekly parts, and he was paid by the word..mmmmm.. ..just count those adjectives!

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