Biographia Literaria vs Apologia pro vita sua
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
36words between them — 0 min of it
Biographia Literaria is longer — 138,429 words against 138,393 for Apologia pro vita sua, a difference of 36 words or about 0 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 9.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Biographia Literaria | Apologia pro vita sua | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Coleridge, Samuel Taylor | Newman, John Henry |
| Words | 138,429 | 138,393 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 14m | 9h 14m |
| Unique words | 14,672 | 9,660 |
| Sentences | 4,277 | 6,548 |
| Average sentence length | 32.4 words | 21.1 words |
| Reading grade | 15 | 9.7 |
| Reading ease | 45.2 | 63.4 |
| Long words | 13.6% | 11.4% |
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 = |138,429 − 138,393| = 36 words 36 ÷ 250 wpm = 0 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Biographia Literaria or Apologia pro vita sua?
Biographia Literaria is longer — 138,429 words against 138,393 for Apologia pro vita sua, a difference of 36 words or about 0 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 9.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 6081 and no. 22088 — 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.
