A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance vs The Entailed Hat
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance
784words between them — 3 min of it
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance is longer — 179,954 words against 179,170 for The Entailed Hat, a difference of 784 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The Entailed Hat is the harder read, at grade 9.7 against 8.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance | The Entailed Hat | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules) | Townsend, George Alfred |
| Words | 179,954 | 179,170 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 00m | 11h 57m |
| Unique words | 21,340 | 15,679 |
| Sentences | 10,270 | 7,657 |
| Average sentence length | 17.5 words | 23.4 words |
| Reading grade | 8.8 | 9.7 |
| Reading ease | 63.2 | 67.5 |
| Long words | 11.8% | 7.3% |
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 = |179,954 − 179,170| = 784 words 784 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance or The Entailed Hat?
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance is longer — 179,954 words against 179,170 for The Entailed Hat, a difference of 784 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The Entailed Hat is the harder read, at grade 9.7 against 8.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 22049 and no. 19146 — 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.
