Four Arthurian Romances vs London and the Kingdom - Volume 2
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
214words between them — 1 min of it
Four Arthurian Romances is longer — 190,647 words against 190,433 for London and the Kingdom - Volume 2, a difference of 214 words or about 1 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 8.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Four Arthurian Romances | London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Chrétien, de Troyes, active 12th century | Sharpe, Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson) |
| Words | 190,647 | 190,433 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 43m | 12h 42m |
| Unique words | 9,829 | 9,900 |
| Sentences | 8,175 | 9,279 |
| Average sentence length | 23.3 words | 20.5 words |
| Reading grade | 8.5 | 9.9 |
| Reading ease | 75.8 | 60.8 |
| Long words | 4.8% | 11.6% |
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 = |190,647 − 190,433| = 214 words 214 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Four Arthurian Romances or London and the Kingdom - Volume 2?
Four Arthurian Romances is longer — 190,647 words against 190,433 for London and the Kingdom - Volume 2, a difference of 214 words or about 1 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 8.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 831 and no. 20990 — 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.
