Ancient States and Empires vs The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
288words between them — 1 min of it
Ancient States and Empires is longer — 215,602 words against 215,314 for The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843, a difference of 288 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843 is the harder read, at grade 12.9 against 10.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Ancient States and Empires | The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Lord, John | Victoria, Queen of Great Britain |
| Words | 215,602 | 215,314 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 14h 22m | 14h 21m |
| Unique words | 13,298 | 12,087 |
| Sentences | 10,896 | 7,611 |
| Average sentence length | 19.8 words | 28.3 words |
| Reading grade | 10.4 | 12.9 |
| Reading ease | 55.6 | 53.1 |
| Long words | 14.1% | 11.9% |
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 = |215,602 − 215,314| = 288 words 288 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Ancient States and Empires or The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843?
Ancient States and Empires is longer — 215,602 words against 215,314 for The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843, a difference of 288 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 1, 1837-1843 is the harder read, at grade 12.9 against 10.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 27114 and no. 20023 — 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.
