Posted by Jon on May 26, 2011 at 06:05:12 user Jon.
In Reply to: Re: Stats posted by Owen Roberts on May 24, 2011 at 15:01:02:
I reordered the table in chronological order; viewed that way, it's more apparent that (aside from PD and SD) the book lengths aren't all that different, with the Goblin stories being the shortest. I'd hypothesize that PD and SD are longer because, now Ransome realized he had a series, he had to provide more history for his characters. For the later books, much of the history was already in place and he only detailed new characters who were significant to the story (e.g. Port & Starboard and the D&Gs didn't get as much history as Tom Dudgeon did in CC; the D&Gs had to wait for BS for their turn while P&S disappeared to France). And the Eels didn't get anywhere close to the background that significant characters did; there was only enough exposition to account for their presence (hardly surprising if Ransome didn't intend to do any more stories set in that area).
| Book | Chaps | Words | Av Wds/Ch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SA | 31 | 99,167 | 3,199 | |
| PD | 36 | 118,325 | 3,287 | |
| SD | 36 | 120,622 | 3,351 | |
| WH | 29 | 95,389 | 3,289 | |
| CC | 30 | 95,960 | 3,199 | |
| PP | 35 | 99,753 | 2,850 | |
| WD | 27 | 91,484 | 3,388 | |
| SW | 30 | 89,722 | 2,991 | |
| BS | 33 | 98,785 | 2,993 | |
| ML | 27 | 92,168 | 3,414 | |
| PM | 30 | 92,845 | 3,095 | |
| GN | 29 | 98,142 | 3,384 |