Le Morte d'Arthur vs On the Cross
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
748words between them — 3 min of it
Le Morte d'Arthur is longer — 168,759 words against 168,011 for On the Cross, a difference of 748 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Le Morte d'Arthur is the harder read, at grade 9.2 against 8.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Le Morte d'Arthur | On the Cross | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Malory, Thomas, Sir | Hillern, Wilhelmine von |
| Words | 168,759 | 168,011 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 15m | 11h 12m |
| Unique words | 5,793 | 12,476 |
| Sentences | 6,525 | 7,982 |
| Average sentence length | 25.9 words | 21 words |
| Reading grade | 9.2 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 75.1 | 68.4 |
| Long words | 4.5% | 8.4% |
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 = |168,759 − 168,011| = 748 words 748 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Le Morte d'Arthur or On the Cross?
Le Morte d'Arthur is longer — 168,759 words against 168,011 for On the Cross, a difference of 748 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Le Morte d'Arthur is the harder read, at grade 9.2 against 8.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 1251 and no. 36725 — 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.
