David Copperfield vs The Brothers Karamazov
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
3,663words between them — 15 min of it
David Copperfield is longer — 355,107 words against 351,444 for The Brothers Karamazov, a difference of 3,663 words or about 15 min of extra reading. David Copperfield is the harder read, at grade 7.9 against 7.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| David Copperfield | The Brothers Karamazov | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dickens, Charles | Dostoyevsky, Fyodor |
| Words | 355,107 | 351,444 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 23h 40m | 23h 26m |
| Unique words | 16,593 | 12,519 |
| Sentences | 18,139 | 20,499 |
| Average sentence length | 19.6 words | 17.1 words |
| Reading grade | 7.9 | 7.3 |
| Reading ease | 73.1 | 73.5 |
| Long words | 7.6% | 8.6% |
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 = |355,107 − 351,444| = 3,663 words 3,663 ÷ 250 wpm = 15 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, David Copperfield or The Brothers Karamazov?
David Copperfield is longer — 355,107 words against 351,444 for The Brothers Karamazov, a difference of 3,663 words or about 15 min of extra reading. David Copperfield is the harder read, at grade 7.9 against 7.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 766 and no. 28054 — 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.
