Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Getting longer since when, though?
I very much enjoy reading 19th century literature, and 19th century novels were, on average, much, much longer than the typical modern novel, typically being published in three volumes so that three people could borrow the book from the library (the average person's main source of books in 19th century Britain) at the same time. Eight out of Dickens's fifteen novels are over 300,000 words, for example.
Clearly, therefore, novels became considerably shorter before they started getting longer again (eg the typical Agatha Christie novel is around 50,000 words), and even today a 300,000-word novel would be regarded as something of a "blockbuster".
It would seem, therefore, to be something of a cyclic phenomenon, perhaps?
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Sorry,
I should have added that I was talking about US publishers mostly in the 1950's through the 1970's.
Apache