A Treatise on Domestic Economy vs The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
591words between them — 2 min of it
A Treatise on Domestic Economy is longer — 125,458 words against 124,867 for The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII, a difference of 591 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII is the harder read, at grade 10.4 against 9.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A Treatise on Domestic Economy | The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Beecher, Catharine Esther | Ovid |
| Words | 125,458 | 124,867 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 22m | 8h 19m |
| Unique words | 9,785 | 10,620 |
| Sentences | 6,867 | 5,111 |
| Average sentence length | 18.3 words | 24.4 words |
| Reading grade | 9.2 | 10.4 |
| Reading ease | 61.9 | 64.3 |
| Long words | 12.6% | 8.3% |
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 = |125,458 − 124,867| = 591 words 591 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A Treatise on Domestic Economy or The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII?
A Treatise on Domestic Economy is longer — 125,458 words against 124,867 for The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII, a difference of 591 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII is the harder read, at grade 10.4 against 9.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21829 and no. 21765 — 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.
