The Word Count of 175 Favorite Novels

I’m writing a novel. You’re writing a novel. We’re all writing or reading novels. But how long is too long? How short is too short? If you’re obsessing over how many words your novel should be, it’s a good idea to consult the word counts of popular novels as a frame of reference. In this post, you’ll find the word counts of 175 (well, it’s actually 177, but 175 sounds cleaner!) classic, bestselling, award-winning novels, from books you’d recognize from high school English to recent hits. Along the way, I’ll analyze the word counts and note a few interesting trends. It’s my hope this list can be a resource for other writers like me who wonder how long a novel should be. I hope to follow it up with a children’s literature specific list.

The links will take you to Amazon (these are affiliate links), and if you’d like to know my sources, you can view them in this Google spreadsheet.

Also of note, check out my list of the 20+ best books on creative writing:

The 20+ Best Books on Creative Writing

A few series in focus

Before we dive into the list, let’s explore the word count of a few popular fantasy series and one favorite, bestselling author who racks up high word counts.

Word count of Harry Potter series

The total word count of J.K. Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series is 1,084,625. That’s like reading David Foster Wallaces’s Infinite Jest (488,940) twice.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone	J. K. Rowling	77,325
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	J. K. Rowling	84,799
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	J. K. Rowling	106,821
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	J. K. Rowling	190,858
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J. K. Rowling	257,154
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince	J. K. Rowling	169,441
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J. K. Rowling	198,227

Word count of The Chronicles of Narnia series

The total word count of C.S. Lewis’ seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series is 345,535. That’s approximately the same length as Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (344,665).

The Magician’s Nephew	C.S. Lewis	64,480
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe	C.S. Lewis	38,421
Prince Caspain	C.S. Lewis	46,290
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	C.S. Lewis	53,960
The Silver Chair	C.S. Lewis	51,022
The Horse and His Boy	C.S. Lewis	48,029
The Last Battle	C.S. Lewis	43,333

Word count of Earthsea series

The word count of Ursula K. Le Guin’s six-book Earthsea series is 480,503. That’s like reading Stephen King’s The Stand: Uncut at 471,485 words and a third of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea at 26,601 words.

A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	56,533
The Tombs of Atuan	Ursula K. Le Guin	45,939
The Farthest Shore	Ursula K. Le Guin	60,591
Tehanu	Ursula K. Le Guin	99,200
Tales from Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	128,960
The Other Wind	Ursula K. Le Guin	89,280

Word count of His Dark Materials series

The word count of Philip Pullman’s three-book His Dark Materials fantasy series is 390,575, about the length of reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (130,115) three times.

The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman	112,815
The Subtle Knife	Philip Pullman	109,120
The Amber Spyglass	Philip Pullman	168,640

Word count of Game of Thrones series

The word count of George R. R. Martin’s five-volume A Song of Ice and Fire series is 1,770,000. The series is incomplete, so there could still be more words on the way! That’s about the length of Stephen King’s It (445,134) times four (1,781,736).

A Game of Thrones	George R. R. Martin	298,000
A Clash of Kings	George R. R. Martin	326,000
A Storm of Swords	George R. R. Martin	424,000
A Feast for Crows	George R. R. Martin	300,000
A Dance with Dragons	George R. R. Martin	422,000

Word count of the Lord of the Rings series

The word count of J. R. R. Tolkien’s four-volume Lord of the Rings series is 576,459. To equal that, read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (190,858), Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (169,441), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (198,227) plus about half of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (36,014)

The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien	95,356
The Fellowship of the Ring	J. R. R. Tolkien	187,790
The Two Towers	J. R. R. Tolkien	156,198
The Return of the King	J. R. R. Tolkien	137,115

Author in focus: word count of Stephen King’s books

It’s also fun to look at the word counts in the work of one author in particular, so I decided to do a little exploring and find out the word counts of some books by a beloved author, Stephen King, a prolific writer with millions of words among his many books. In this list, you can see that The Stand: Uncut is 471,485 words. His writing guide and memoir On Writing is 79,139, meaning The Stand holds approximately six (5.957) books of On Writing‘s length within it. On Writing is one of my favorite guides to writing. I’d gladly take more of those over another novel. (Though I’d of course take The Stand over any novel ever.) For more Stephen King book word counts, see this very detailed Reddit thread.

Carrie	Stephen King	61,343
‘Salem’s Lot	Stephen King	152,204
The Shining	Stephen King	165,581
The Stand (uncut version)	Stephen King	471,485
The Dark Tower: Gunslinger	Stephen King	56,583
Pet Sematary	Stephen King	142,664
It	Stephen King	445,134
On Writing	Stephen King	79,139

Now we’ll move along to look at this list of 177 word counts of popular novels.

Books that are 500,000+ words long

Here we see some of the longest novels in the world in the 500,000-word and up level. (And for more on that, check out the Wikipedia entry for List of Longest Novels.) Many people put reading Marcel Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time series on their reading bucket list. I’ve only read the first volume, Swann’s Way, and loved it, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to reading the rest of the books.

In Search of Lost Time books	Marcel Proust	1,267,069
A Suitable Boy	Vikram Seth	591,554
Atlas Shrugged	Ayn Rand	561,996
War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	561,304
Les Miserables	Victor Hugo	530,982

Books that are 400,000 words long

Think you can manage writing a 400,000-word novel? If you were going to write 1,000 words a day, that would take 400 days, more than a year. And if you only manage 500 words a day, double that to 800 days, over 2 years. Still, if it’s fame and glory you’re chasing, why not? David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is a cult classic. And Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize. Maybe bigger is better.

Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace	488,940
The Stand (uncut version)	Stephen King	471,485
It	Stephen King	445,134
A Storm of Swords	George R. R. Martin	424,000
A Dance with Dragons	George R. R. Martin	422,000
Gone with the Wind	Margaret Mitchell	418,053

Books that are 300,000 words long

If you’re writing a 300,000-word novel, you’re in good company. Some of the most beloved classics in literature sit in the 300,000 word range. And some of these are downright page turners. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander has to be the quickest 305,000 words I’ve ever read.

The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas	375,695
Lonesome Dove	Larry McMurtry	365,712
The Brothers Karamazov	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	364,153
Bleak House	Charles Dickens	360,947
David Copperfield	Charles Dickens	358,000
Anna Karenina	Leo Tolstoy	349,736
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	344,665
A Clash of Kings	George R. R. Martin	326,000
Gravity’s Rainbow	Thomas Pynchon	324,945
Middlemarch	George Eliot	316,059
The Fountainhead	Ayn Rand	311,596
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke	308,931
Outlander	Diana Gabaldon	305,000
A Feast for Crows	George R. R. Martin	300,000

Books that are 200,000 words long

Writing 200,000 words seems manageable. Interestingly, the first book in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones, is also his shortest while J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth and longest book in her series. Here we also have the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Salman Rushdie’s Man Booker-winning Midnight’s Children. Two classics of the Western canon, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment also reach the 200,000 word novel club.

A Game of Thrones	George R. R. Martin	298,000
Ulysses	James Joyce	265,222
Cloudsplitter	Russell Banks	260,742
Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix	J. K. Rowling	257,154
A Prayer for Owen Meany	John Irving	236,061
East of Eden	John Steinbeck	225,395
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	Michael Chabon	216,020
Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	211,591
Midnight’s Children	Salman Rushdie	208,773
Moby Dick	Herman Melville	206,052

Books that are 150,000 words long

I split up the 100,000 – 200,000 category in two to make it easier to grasp. Plus, that 50,000 word difference is significant, at least according to the good people of National Novel Writing Month, who count a winning novel at 50,000 words. In this category, we have three books in the Harry Potter series. We have a few modern classics of literary fiction, including Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. We see a few fantasy and science fiction novels here, too, like Dune, American Gods, and Eragon.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J. K. Rowling	198,227
The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen	196,774
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	J. K. Rowling	190,858
The Fellowship of the Ring	J. R. R. Tolkien	187,790
Dune	Frank Herbert	187,240
Memoirs of a Geisha	Arthur Golden	186,418
Jane Eyre	Charlotte Brontë	183,858
Little Women (Books 1 and 2)	Louisa May Alcott	183,833
Great Expectations	Charles Dickens	183,349
American Gods	Neil Gaiman	183,222
The Poisonwood Bible	Barbara Kingsolver	177,679
Catch-22	Joseph Heller	174,269
For Whom the Bell Tolls	Ernest Hemingway	174,106
The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck	169,481
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince	J. K. Rowling	169,441
White Teeth	Zadie Smith	169,389
The Amber Spyglass	Philip Pullman	168,640
Uncle Tom’s Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe	166,622
The Shining	Stephen King	165,581
Cold Mountain	Charles Frazier	161,511
Dracula	Bram Stoker	160,363
The Kitchen God’s Wife	Amy Tan	159,276
Alias Grace	Margaret Atwood	157,665
Eragon	Christopher Paolini	157,000
The Two Towers	J. R. R. Tolkien	156,198
Watership Down	Richard Adams	156,154
Oliver Twist	Charles Dickens	155,960
Emma	Jane Austen	155,887
The Time Traveler’s Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	155,717
‘Salem’s Lot	Stephen King	152,204

Books that are 100,000 words long

At 100,000 words, several of these novels are bestsellers. If you want to write a hit, this might be the sweet spot. Also, we’ve got Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, all three of which were adapted for Oscar-nominated movies. Might this be the perfect length for a film version of your novel? It’s certainly something to consider. Note that we’ve got the first novels in three beloved YA fantasy series here: Twilight, Divergent, and Throne of Glass. If you’re writing YA fantasy, aim your word count high.

Gone Girl	Gillian Flynn	145,719
The Last of the Mohicans	James Fenimore Cooper	145,469
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Betty Smith	145,092
One Hundred Years of Solitude	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	144,523
Pet Sematary	Stephen King	142,664
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	Jules Verne	138,128
Snow Falling on Cedars	David Guterson	138,098
Moll Flanders	Daniel Defoe	138,087
The Return of the King	J. R. R. Tolkien	137,115
A Tale of Two Cities	Charles Dickens	135,420
Schindler’s List	Thomas Keneally	134,710
The Silmarillion	J. R. R. Tolkien	130,115
Tales from Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	128,960
Sense and Sensibility	Jane Austen	126,194
Atonement	Ian McEwan	123,378
Pride and Prejudice	Jane Austen	120,697
My Sister’s Keeper	Jodi Picoult	119,529
Twilight (Book 1)	Stephanie Meyer	118,875
The Tenth Circle	Jodi Picoult	114,779
Walden	Henry David Thoreau	114,634
Throne of Glass	Sarah J. Maas	113,665
The Golden Compass	Philip Pullman	112,815
McTeague	Frank Norris	112,737
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	109,571
The Subtle Knife	Philip Pullman	109,120
Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë	107,945
Gullivers Travels	Jonathan Swift	107,349
Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban	J. K. Rowling	106,821
Divergent	Veronica Roth	105,143
A Distant Shore	Caryl Phillips	103,090
Ender’s Game	Orson Scott Card	100,609
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	100,388

Books that are 90,000 words long

We’ve dropped a digit and are now at five-figure word counts, but that doesn’t mean the prestige (or bestseller potential) drops, too. Here at 90,000 words, we see Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games alongside Paula Hawkins’ frenzied thriller The Girl on the Train and Toni Morrison’s lush literary Song of Solomon. And 90,000 words seems quite doable. At 1,000 words a day, you’d be finished in 90 days, or three months. And if you really hit your stride at 1,000 words, you’d finish four 90,000-word books in a year. Not bad if you’re planning a series!

The Hunger Games (Book 1)	Suzanne Collins	99,750
Welcome to the Monkey House	Kurt Vonnegut	99,560
All the Pretty Horses	Cormac McCarthy	99,277
Tehanu	Ursula K. Le Guin	99,200
Anne of Green Gables	Lucy Maud Montgomery	97,364
The Girl on the Train	Paula Hawkins	95,410
The Hobbit	J. R. R. Tolkien	95,356
The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	94,240
Song of Solomon	Toni Morrison	92,400
Joy Luck Club	Amy Tan	91,419

Books that are 80,000 words long

There are many bestsellers and award-winning novels in the 80,000-word novel society, like Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead and the Booker Prize-winning The English Patient. But what strikes me most about the books in this category is The Diary of a Young Girl. I take particular inspiration from Anne Frank’s diary, which is 82,662 words long. That’s as long as some of the classics of literature, including 1984 and Persuasion, and shows how insightful, observant, intelligent, and hopeful Anne Frank was while writing her diary. What an accomplishment. It stirs you on, doesn’t it?

Waiting	Hin Ja	89,297
The Other Wind	Ursula K. Le Guin	89,280
1984	George Orwell	88,942
Persuasion	Jane Austen	87,978
Pere Goriot	Honore de Balzac	87,846
The Unbearable Lightness of Being	Milan Kundera	85,199
Gilead	Marilynne Robinson	84,845
Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets	J. K. Rowling	84,799
Cry, the Beloved Country	Alan Paton	83,774
The Diary of a Young Girl	Anne Frank	82,762
The English Patient	Michael Ondaatje	82,370
The Dark Is Rising	Susan Cooper	82,143
The Secret Garden	Frances Hodgson Burnett	80,398

Books that are 70,000 words long

It feels a bit strange to know that one of my favorite novels of all time, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is 73,404 words long. It’s like knowing how many words are in the bible, if Catcher is your misfit religion like mine was. We see in this batch of 70,000-word novels the first book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series at 77,325. If you’re keeping track, you could write that in 77 days, a little over two months at 1,000 words each day.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep	Phillip K. Dick	79,360
On Writing	Stephen King	79,139
The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	78,462
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone	J. K. Rowling	77,325
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	74,800
A Farewell to Arms	Ernest Hemingway	74,240
The Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger	73,404
White Fang	Jack London	72,071
The Woman Warrior	Maxine Hong Kingston	70,957

Books that are 60,000 words long

From John Green to Virginia Woolf to Terry Pratchett, the authors who have written beloved 60,000-word novels know how to pack a lot of meaning into a relatively short book. If you’re looking to expand your novel beyond NaNoWriMo length, take some comfort that you don’t have to stretch too far past the 50,000 word draft to pen a future classic.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain	69,066
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere	ZZ Packer	68,410
The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemingway	67,707
A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	67,280
The Fault in Our Stars	John Green	67,203
Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stevenson	66,950
The Color Purple	Alice Walker	66,556
The Color of Magic	Terry Pratchett	65,113
The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	64,768
The Magician’s Nephew	C.S. Lewis	64,480
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	63,766
The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	63,604
Mrs. Dalloway	Virginia Woolf	63,422
All Quiet on the Western Front	Erich Remarque	61,922
Carrie	Stephen King	61,343
The Farthest Shore	Ursula K. Le Guin	60,591

Books that are 50,000 words long

Several classics of children’s literature are comfortably in the 50,000-word novel range, including Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. The novels in this category, including Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning The Hours (one of my favorite books), prove that you don’t have to type your fingers off in order to craft something that takes your reader’s breath away. It’s also interesting to note that The Hours is an homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which we learned in the last category, is longer (at 63,422). Sometimes you can take inspiration for a retelling and capture the beauty of the original in far fewer words.

Lord of the Flies	William Golding	59,900
War of the Worlds	H.G. Wells	59,796
Black Beauty	Anna Sewell	59,645
The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame	58,428
A Separate Peace	John Knowles	56,787
As I Lay Dying	William Faulkner	56,695
The Dark Tower: Gunslinger	Stephen King	56,583
A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	56,533
The Hours	Michael Cunningham	54,243
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	C.S. Lewis	53,960
The Silver Chair	C.S. Lewis	51,022

Books that are 40,000 words long

Now, none of these authors would win NaNoWriMo with their 40,000-word novel, but they’re obviously playing the long game. This list of 40,000-word novels should be subtitled: “How to write a book they’ll teach in high school English.” It’s like a who’s who of the English curriculum: Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Hinton, Bradbury, hell, probably Nicholas Sparks… I mean, who knows? Clearly, even though we’re getting down to the end of this list of word counts of favorite novels, there are still heavy hitters in the lower range.

Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	49,459
The Notebook	Nicholas Sparks	48,978
The Outsiders	S.E. Hinton	48,523
The Horse and His Boy	C.S. Lewis	48,029
The Red Badge of Courage	Stephen Crane	47,180
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	47,094
Prince Caspain	C.S. Lewis	46,290
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	46,118
The Tombs of Atuan	Ursula K. Le Guin	45,939
The Last Battle	C.S. Lewis	43,333

Books that are 30,000 words long

As an aspiring children’s literature writer, I’m pleasantly surprised and inspired to learn that Roald Dahl’s classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is only 30,644 words long. You can manage that in a month, for sure! It’s also interesting to note that James M. Cain’s noir novel Double Indemnity is only 30,072. And at 30,000 words, most of these novels fall into the novella length, which is generally between 17,500 and 40,000 words.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe	C.S. Lewis	38,421
The Stranger	Albert Camus	36,014
Old Yeller	Fred Gipson	35,978
The Time Machine	H.G. Wells	32,149
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	30,644
Double Indemnity	James M. Cain	30,072

Books that are 20,000 words long

And here we are at the last category I’ve included: novels that are 20,000 words long. When you read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and George Orwell’s Animal Farm, you’re reading some of the shortest novels (really, novellas) you’ll find in bound books, yet these alarming, still-shocking stories show you can make a huge impact in just a few words.

Animal Farm	George Orwell	29,966
Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck	29,160
The Old Man and the Sea	Ernest Hemingway	26,601
The Mouse and the Motorcycle	Beverly Cleary	22,416
The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	21,180

What’s the word count of your novel? What are some of your favorite short novels or long novels? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on writing and readings books of all lengths.