BY THEIR (NEW) WORDS SHALL YE KNOW THEM - WHARTON,EDITH, MAINWARING,MARION, AND THE BUCCANEERS

Reviewers are sharply divided about the success with which Marion Main waring ''completed'' Edith Wharton's unfinished novel The Buccaneers. To gauge the ''seamlessness'' of the fit between Wharton's portion of the novel and the chapters that Mainwaring added, the present study pr esents a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the ratio of new types (i.e., words that did not appear in previous chapters) to tokens. Analysis of Wharton's classic novels The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence indicates that the ratio of new types to tokens followed a standard progression in her work. Analysis of Wharton's twenty-nine chapters of The Buccaneers indicates that here, too, she was followin g the same course. However, analysis of the ''completed'' version of T he Buccaneers reveals that the substitution of Mainwaring for Wharton as author caused a decisive break from the well established pattern.