Palindromic Substrings

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein contains a few 9-letter substrings:
NEVEREVEN, '... never even ...'
ELIEVEILE, '... I believe I left him ...'
EREWEWERE, '... where we were seated ...'
TRONGNORT, '... a strong northerly blast ...'

Nine letter examples are fairly common; many literary works of any length contain at least one such example. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice contains quite a few:
NERALAREN, '... ladies in general are not ...'
HEREWEREH, '... there were half-hours of pleasant conversation ...'
NEVEREVEN
ENDEREDNE, '... was rendered necessary ...'
EREWEWERE, '... if it were. We were always good friends ...'
MERECEREM, '... the mere ceremonious salutation ...'
ERWASAWRE, '... disposing of her-was a wretched reflection ...'

Nathaniel Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter, contains this 10-letter substring:
NISOPPOSIN, '... wronged old man is opposing it ...'

Kate Chopin's The Awakening has an 11-letter substring that originates from a single word:
SENSUOUSNES, '... all her awakening sensuousness. He saw ...'
(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil also contains this example.)

Herman Melville's Moby Dick has a 12-letter:
PULLUPPULLUP, '... "Pull up-pull up!" ...'
(Jane Austen's Emma includes the 14-letter variation: '... Put it up, put it up ...')

Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol has a longer one at 13 in length, but it is the not-very-interesting:
HAHAHAHAHAHAH, '... "Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!" He said ...'
(Edgar Allan Poe has the same substring appear in The Purloined Letter.)

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince has a much more interesting 13-letter one:
UTSIDEBEDISTU, '... and even should affairs outside be disturbed ...'

The King James Version of the Bible clocks in with its longest substring at 13-letter:
NOMANEVENAMON, '... there was no man; even among them ...'

Mark Twain's Advetures of Huckleberry Finn has a 14-letter:
OOGOOGOOGOOGOO, '... and said "Goo-goo--goo-goo-goo" all the time ...'

And The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky has the 14-letter:
OOROOROOROOROO, '... Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say! ...'

W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk extends a common "...ERE..." construction across two sentences for the 15-letter:
EWEREHEREHEREWE, '... the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have ...'

Dicken's Great Expectations has this 15-letter substring:
TISAWONENOWASIT, '... and that I saw one now. As it stood open ...'

Dickens seems to have a knack for palindromic inclusions as his A Tale Of Two Cities has an even longer one at 17-letters:
OOLOOLOOLOOLOOLOO, '... See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off ...'

Henry David Thoreau's Walden... has this 17-letter onomatopoeia:
OOHOOBOOHOOBOOHOO, '... as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one ...'

Should we be surprised that James Joyce's Ulysses has the longest that I've yet found? Albeit a rather boring 20 letters:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, '... I can see his face cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again ...'

If you are interested in scan other texts, you may use this webpage I have created: Scan Text For Longest Palindromic Substring.

-- Eric

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