Celebrated Crimes (Complete) vs Modern English biography, volume 2 (of 4), I-Q
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
23,588words between them — 1h 34m of it
Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is longer — 622,787 words against 599,199 for Modern English biography, volume 2 (of 4), I-Q, a difference of 23,588 words or about 1h 34m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 5.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Celebrated Crimes (Complete) | Modern English biography, volume 2 (of 4), I-Q | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dumas, Alexandre | Boase, Frederic |
| Words | 622,787 | 599,199 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 41h 31m | 39h 57m |
| Unique words | 22,062 | 32,207 |
| Sentences | 19,086 | 87,958 |
| Average sentence length | 32.6 words | 6.8 words |
| Reading grade | 13.8 | 5.8 |
| Reading ease | 54 | 65.7 |
| Long words | 9.7% | 14.1% |
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 = |622,787 − 599,199| = 23,588 words 23,588 ÷ 250 wpm = 1h 34m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Celebrated Crimes (Complete) or Modern English biography, volume 2 (of 4), I-Q?
Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is longer — 622,787 words against 599,199 for Modern English biography, volume 2 (of 4), I-Q, a difference of 23,588 words or about 1h 34m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 5.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2760 and no. 71046 — 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.
