A pair of blue eyes vs Helen Vardon's confession
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
478words between them — 2 min of it
A pair of blue eyes is longer — 131,255 words against 130,777 for Helen Vardon's confession, a difference of 478 words or about 2 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 8.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A pair of blue eyes | Helen Vardon's confession | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Hardy, Thomas | Freeman, R. Austin (Richard Austin) |
| Words | 131,255 | 130,777 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 45m | 8h 43m |
| Unique words | 10,854 | 9,962 |
| Sentences | 6,641 | 7,053 |
| Average sentence length | 19.8 words | 18.5 words |
| Reading grade | 8.4 | 8.2 |
| Reading ease | 70.3 | 69.1 |
| Long words | 8.2% | 9.6% |
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 = |131,255 − 130,777| = 478 words 478 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A pair of blue eyes or Helen Vardon's confession?
A pair of blue eyes is longer — 131,255 words against 130,777 for Helen Vardon's confession, a difference of 478 words or about 2 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 8.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 224 and no. 76728 — 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.
