Salvete!
> Is the Freebase data good enough for your purposes? It appears that it lists the
> most important characters first, but that may just be the order in which they
> were added. You may not be able to rely on that sequence.
>
> A Tale of Two Cities: http://www.freebase.com/m/09c55p
> Pride and Prejudice: http://www.freebase.com/m/060xy
>
Even if a single list or database is not compleat, one could cascade down to the next option: if 650a is blank in x, then gather from y, and so on down the line until *something* is in the field. Since this is for "Classics" one assumes that they are widely held, at least according to some genres and some data from da OCLC. [1] Indeed, if one were really trying to show off a visualisation, were I they, I'd hit those widely held lists since frequency would have those titles on most people's shelves.
The chore to me is rather finite and rather well defined. It's just a lot of yeoman's work, but the bulk of that can be done with a bot or army of them. It would be much easier if the list requested by the petitioner were well defined somehow. At that stage it would be a matter of grabbing ISBNs,cascading scripts, and deciding on outputs. It might even be a simple definition of Classics as predating a certain publication year.
The list's the thing!
Cheers,
Brooke
[1]
http://www.oclc.org/research/wtworldcat/toplovestories.html?urlm=168868(The murky depths of my memories say that at some point, Bleak House was top dawg. I've tested on that assumption since.)
