Longer Still And Longer

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 4

Longer Still And Longer

For over 200 years, according to the Guinness Book of Records, Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa Harlowe” has held unchallenged the undeniable distinction of being the longest novel in the world. Now it’s been knocked out of first place by Marguerite Young’s “Miss Macintosh, My Darling.”

The new American Champion’s opus is said to run to more than a million words which is getting on for twice as long as “War and Peace,” j and a quarter as long again as the Bible. Samuel Richardson (“of England,” as the Guinness Book proudly notes) had the Russian boy and the Israeli team roundly licked with his punishing 984.870 words. But there he stuck. I What went wrong with our, lad, to make him jack it in at i 984,870, when the round' million was so heartbreakingly close? Did Britain’s honour mean nothing to him? Or was nobody keeping a proper count in those rough-and-ready days before the sport was properly organised? Not that it would have done him much good even if he had staggered across the million line, because the American girl is reported to have another 300,000 words up her sleeve in reserve (she cut them out, I take it, for lack of competition). Michael Frayn, in the “Observer.” London.