Complete Short Works of George Meredith vs On the Cross
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,004words between them — 4 min of it
Complete Short Works of George Meredith is longer — 169,015 words against 168,011 for On the Cross, a difference of 1,004 words or about 4 min of extra reading. On the Cross is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 8.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Complete Short Works of George Meredith | On the Cross | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Meredith, George | Hillern, Wilhelmine von |
| Words | 169,015 | 168,011 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 16m | 11h 12m |
| Unique words | 15,714 | 12,476 |
| Sentences | 9,068 | 7,982 |
| Average sentence length | 18.6 words | 21 words |
| Reading grade | 8.3 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 68.6 | 68.4 |
| Long words | 9.7% | 8.4% |
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 = |169,015 − 168,011| = 1,004 words 1,004 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Complete Short Works of George Meredith or On the Cross?
Complete Short Works of George Meredith is longer — 169,015 words against 168,011 for On the Cross, a difference of 1,004 words or about 4 min of extra reading. On the Cross is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 8.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 4499 and no. 36725 — 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.
