Great Expectations vs The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,683words between them — 7 min of it
Great Expectations is longer — 185,493 words against 183,810 for The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2), a difference of 1,683 words or about 7 min of extra reading. The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Great Expectations | The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dickens, Charles | Díaz del Castillo, Bernal |
| Words | 185,493 | 183,810 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 22m | 12h 15m |
| Unique words | 11,364 | 8,768 |
| Sentences | 8,014 | 5,878 |
| Average sentence length | 23.1 words | 31.3 words |
| Reading grade | 9 | 13.8 |
| Reading ease | 71.6 | 52 |
| Long words | 6.9% | 11.2% |
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 = |185,493 − 183,810| = 1,683 words 1,683 ÷ 250 wpm = 7 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Great Expectations or The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2)?
Great Expectations is longer — 185,493 words against 183,810 for The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2), a difference of 1,683 words or about 7 min of extra reading. The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 1400 and no. 32474 — 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.
