The Riddley Walker Concordance
Key-Word in Context (KWIC) Concordance
The entries for each word are available in two sort orders:
In order of occurrence in the text
This makes it possible to see the distribution of a word throughout the text and see how it is used in particular passages:
You can view all entries (very long page, may take some time to download) or browse by letter/character:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z & 0-9
Sorted by right context (i.e the following words)
This makes it possible to identify common phrases and collocations:
You can view all entries (long page) or browse by letter/character:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z & 0-9
Word Lists
Page Numbering
Page numbers in the concordance refer to the UK first edition (Jonathan Cape, 1980), the Indiana University Press Expanded Edition (1998) and the UK 20th Anniversary Edition (Bloomsbury, 2002).
Even though it is based on the same printing plates as the first editions, the page numbering in the 1982 Picador edition, the first UK paperback edition, is different: space is saved by not always starting a chapter on a new page, which gives 214 pages in total, rather than 220 as in the other editions. The 2012 Gollancz edition has been completely reset, which means that even where a chapter starts on the same page as the first edition, the page breaks do not fall in the same place.
The table shows the respective start pages of each chapter in (a) the Cape, Bloomsbury and Indiana U.P editions, (b) the 1982 Picador edition and (c) the 2012 Gollancz edition.
| Chapter | Concordance | Picador | Gollancz |
| 1 | 1 | *1 | 1 |
| 2 | 8 | *8 | 8 |
| 3 | 16 | 15 | 16 |
| 4 | 22 | *21 | 22 |
| 5 | 26 | *25 | 26 |
| 6 | 30 | 28 | 30 |
| 7 | 37 | *35 | 37 |
| 8 | 44 | 41 | 44 |
| 9 | 54 | *51 | 54 |
| 10 | 63 | 59 | 63 |
| 11 | 71 | 67 | 71 |
| 12 | 88 | 84 | 88 |
| 13 | 106 | 101 | 105 |
| 14 | 117 | 112 | 116 |
| 15 | 149 | 143 | 147 |
| 16 | 171 | *166 | 168 |
| 17 | 196 | 190 | 192 |
| 18 | 211 | 205 | 206 |
| end | 220 | 214 | 215 |
Asterisks mark the chapters which start at the top of the page in the Picador edition and where the page-breaks are therefore in the same place as in the other three editions.
If anyone feels like matching up these page numbers with the location numbers in the Kindle edition, please get in touch!
Acknowledgments
The text of Riddley Walker is copyright © 1980 Russell Hoban, and this concordance is made available online with his consent.
The concordance was prepared by Peter Christian, using the freeware concordance software SCP (Simple Concordance Program), version 4.09.
Other Riddley Walker links
Full details about the novel, with plot summary
Gallery of editions of Riddley Walker, as posted by the Russell Hoban community
Riddley Walker Annotations (link to external site) - the comprehensive online companion