A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) vs Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
2,397words between them — 10 min of it
A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) is longer — 165,338 words against 162,941 for Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900, a difference of 2,397 words or about 10 min of extra reading. Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 is the harder read, at grade 11.7 against 10.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) | Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Emerson, Edwin | Makins, George Henry |
| Words | 165,338 | 162,941 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 01m | 10h 52m |
| Unique words | 15,071 | 7,443 |
| Sentences | 8,611 | 7,471 |
| Average sentence length | 19.2 words | 21.8 words |
| Reading grade | 10.9 | 11.7 |
| Reading ease | 51.3 | 50.4 |
| Long words | 16.4% | 15.6% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |165,338 − 162,941| = 2,397 words 2,397 ÷ 250 wpm = 10 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) or Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900?
A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3) is longer — 165,338 words against 162,941 for Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900, a difference of 2,397 words or about 10 min of extra reading. Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 is the harder read, at grade 11.7 against 10.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 26901 and no. 21280 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
