Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 vs The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
931words between them — 4 min of it
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 is longer — 200,494 words against 199,563 for The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2, a difference of 931 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 is the harder read, at grade 12.7 against 7.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 | The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Disraeli, Isaac | Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir |
| Words | 200,494 | 199,563 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 13h 22m | 13h 18m |
| Unique words | 18,635 | 13,233 |
| Sentences | 7,506 | 15,047 |
| Average sentence length | 26.7 words | 13.3 words |
| Reading grade | 12.7 | 7.2 |
| Reading ease | 51.8 | 67.2 |
| Long words | 13.2% | 12.5% |
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
- 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 = |200,494 − 199,563| = 931 words 931 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 or The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2?
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 is longer — 200,494 words against 199,563 for The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2, a difference of 931 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 is the harder read, at grade 12.7 against 7.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21615 and no. 40058 — 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.
