Using a special in-house tool we have analysed the vocabulary of 50 of the world’s most famous Russian, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish novels — in their original language — to determine which of these works have : the greatest number of different words and the highest “vocabulary-richness ratio”, the ratio of the number of different words to the overall word-count of the work in question.
For the purpose of this analysis all punctuation marks (other than apostrophes and (…)
Articles les plus récents
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A comparative analysis of the richness of the vocabulary of 50 of the world’s greatest novels
12 août, par Ray -
"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
8 juin, par Frances Hodgson BurnettA young, awkward and very self-centered English girl leading a sheltered life with her family in India is suddenly orphaned when her parents and many others are killed during an outbreak of cholera. She’s sent back to England to stay with an eccentric uncle who leads an isolated existence in a very large manor in Yorkshire, where she learns a great deal about life, about relating with other people, about the beauties of the resplendent countryside there — and where she discovers a wonderful (…)
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A chronological overview of the 62 Sherlock Holmes stories and novels
19 mai, par Ray1. OVERVIEWS OF THE 58 SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, in chronological order
2. OVERVIEWS OF THE 4 SHERLOCK HOLMES NOVELS, in chronological order
3. THE INDEX OF THE 62 STORIES AND NOVELS, in alphabetical order
The complete text of each of these works can be seen by clicking on the titles.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
1. THE 58 SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES DATE TITLE____________________________ SYNOPSIS___________________________________________________________________________ (…) -
Two uncollected Sherlock Holmes stories
14 mai, par Arthur Conan DoyleThroughout his long and immensely successful writing career Arthur Conan Doyle regularly published collections of all of the Sherlock Holmes stories that he had published separately in various British and USA reviews and newspapers – with the sole exception of these two short tales that were never included in any of the collections of his stories published during the author’s lifetime :
1. THE FIELD BAZAAR (1896) A quite marvellous little sketch about the campaign to raise funds for the (…) -
"Did He Do It ?" by Stefan Zweig (1942)
6 mai, par Stefan ZweigThe narrator has retired with her husband to a lovely spot on a small hillside overlooking an abandoned canal in the countryside near Bath in England, and she recounts their relationship with their young neighbours, an extraordinarily warm-hearted fellow and his wife, to whom she’d given a puppy for company as the couple had remained childless. The dog becomes the central figure in this increasingly-dramatic story as he assumes ever-greater mastery over his owner until the arrival of a (…)
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"Meteor" by John Wyndham (1941)
29 avril, par John WyndhamAn advanced civilization on a dying planet mobilizes all its resources to build and send out a hundred spaceships, each with a thousand volunteers on board, to find new worlds on which they could ensure the survival of their race. This is the tragic story of the one that landed on Earth.
This terrific golden-age sci-fi story by the English author John Wyndham was first published in the March 1941 issue of the American monthly magazine Amazing Stories as “Phoney Meteor” under the pen-name (…) -
"Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1933)
22 avril, par F. Scott FitzgeraldA brilliant account of a couple of sophisticated jazz-age Americans on a jag around the French Riviera and other European hotspots in the 1920s, hobnobbing with fellow expatriates and distilling their existential ennui in a flurry of cocktail conversations and domestic strife.
Fitzgerald manages somehow to create a very adult, credible tone and an atmosphere of significance around his classy couple and their coterie, helped by his gift for witty, wry dialogues and his narrative skill. And (…) -
"Lost Horizon" by James Hilton (1932) - the novel of Shangri-La
15 avril, par James HiltonThe story of a very special and hard-but-not-quite-impossible-to-believe-about valley in the high Tibetan mountains called Shangri-La where wandering explorers and others have found an incredible haven hidden far away from the stress and strife of the outside world and where they grow strangely wise while not really growing much older.
A remarkably well-recounted spiritual adventure story that introduced the concept and the wonderful word Shangri-La into the English language. Thank you, (…) -
"The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1927)
8 avril, par Arthur Conan DoyleThe final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the last published work of the very distinguished doctor, short-story writer, novelist, poet, historian, dramatist and essayist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introduced by a fascinating farewell overview of his Sherlock Holmes works by the author, including his wistful comment “Had Holmes never existed I could not have done more, though he may perhaps have stood a little in the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.”. An e-book (…)
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"His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1917)
1er avril, par Arthur Conan DoyleIntended, as the title indicates, to be the final collection in the series of Sherlock Holmes stories, this quite wonderful book finishes most appropriately by two of the best ones ever : the “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” and “His Last Bow : the War Service of Sherlock Holmes”, the only Sherlock story published during World War I.
Bravo and thank you, Sir Arthur !
We have included in an annex below a few of the many memorable citations from this Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan (…)