Letters of Asa Gray vs A pair of blue eyes
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
169words between them — 1 min of it
Letters of Asa Gray is longer — 131,424 words against 131,255 for A pair of blue eyes, a difference of 169 words or about 1 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 6.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Letters of Asa Gray | A pair of blue eyes | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Gray, Asa | Hardy, Thomas |
| Words | 131,424 | 131,255 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 46m | 8h 45m |
| Unique words | 11,254 | 10,854 |
| Sentences | 9,607 | 6,641 |
| Average sentence length | 13.7 words | 19.8 words |
| Reading grade | 6.6 | 8.4 |
| Reading ease | 72 | 70.3 |
| Long words | 10.8% | 8.2% |
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 = |131,424 − 131,255| = 169 words 169 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Letters of Asa Gray or A pair of blue eyes?
Letters of Asa Gray is longer — 131,424 words against 131,255 for A pair of blue eyes, a difference of 169 words or about 1 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 6.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 55987 and no. 224 — 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.
