Part of the data ring
ReadLength
Two extents, one measure

Celebrated Crimes (Complete) vs War and Peace

Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.

Celebrated Crimes (Complete)

622,787
words · 41h 31m
Longer
vs

War and Peace

575,072
words · 38h 20m

47,715words between them — 3h 11m of it

Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is longer — 622,787 words against 575,072 for War and Peace, a difference of 47,715 words or about 3h 11m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 8.9.

SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Side by side

Celebrated Crimes (Complete)War and Peace
AuthorDumas, AlexandreTolstoy, Leo, graf
Words 622,787 575,072
Reading time at 250 wpm 41h 31m 38h 20m
Unique words 22,062 18,223
Sentences 19,086 27,141
Average sentence length 32.6 words 21.2 words
Reading grade 13.8 8.9
Reading ease 54 68.8
Long words 9.7% 8.5%

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

  1. Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 − 575,072| = 47,715 words
47,715 ÷ 250 wpm = 3h 11m of extra reading

Full methodology →

The second question

Which is longer, Celebrated Crimes (Complete) or War and Peace?

Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is longer — 622,787 words against 575,072 for War and Peace, a difference of 47,715 words or about 3h 11m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 8.9.

Colophon

Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2760 and no. 2600 — 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.

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Amit Sharma

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