What is the longest novel in the English language?

Question:

What is the longest novel in the English language?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: You did specify, "in the English language." YOu might have clarified whether you meant if written originally in English, or in translation. A la recherche des temps perdu, by Proust, was written in French. While it has been translated into English, it is NOT the longest novel in the world or in the history of literature.

While War and Peace, which has some 460,000 Russian and French words, has in the English translation over 560,000 words, and over 3.1 million characters; typically it is over 1400 pages as a paperback, it seems rather to be Henry Darger's novel, The Story of the Vivian Girls, which takes the cake for being the longest novel in the English language.

The Bible is not a novel, but rather a series of books explaining our origins in religious and historical narrative.

According to Wikipedia, the longerst novel is by Henry Darger, The Story of the Vivian Girls.
This is an "illustrated fantasy novel manuscript, typed single-spaced with 15,145 pages in 10 volumes. Discovered after Darger's death, the manuscript has never been published. The total number of words has been estimated; some believe this might be the longest novel ever written. [1] The most conservative guess will put this in the million-word realm, possibly into tens of millions."

Other lenghty novels --in English-- on record include L.Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth, with 1.2 million words; Samuel Richardson's Clarissa about 969,000 words; Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy 591,552 words. Seth's Suitable Boy is the longest conventional novel in English since Clarissa, and allegedly, according to a Wikipedia participant, though source is not properly cited, the longest novel in the English language published in a single volume.