History of Tom Jones, a Foundling vs Fifty years in Wall Street
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
2,363words between them — 9 min of it
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is longer — 351,255 words against 348,892 for Fifty years in Wall Street, a difference of 2,363 words or about 9 min of extra reading. History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is the harder read, at grade 15.7 against 11.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | Fifty years in Wall Street | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Fielding, Henry | Clews, Henry |
| Words | 351,255 | 348,892 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 23h 25m | 23h 16m |
| Unique words | 13,500 | 16,517 |
| Sentences | 9,313 | 15,053 |
| Average sentence length | 37.7 words | 23.2 words |
| Reading grade | 15.7 | 11.4 |
| Reading ease | 49.6 | 54.4 |
| Long words | 9% | 13.8% |
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 = |351,255 − 348,892| = 2,363 words 2,363 ÷ 250 wpm = 9 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling or Fifty years in Wall Street?
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is longer — 351,255 words against 348,892 for Fifty years in Wall Street, a difference of 2,363 words or about 9 min of extra reading. History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is the harder read, at grade 15.7 against 11.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 6593 and no. 70377 — 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.
