London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 vs The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
708words between them — 3 min of it
London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is longer — 190,433 words against 189,725 for The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford, a difference of 708 words or about 3 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 9.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 | The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Sharpe, Reginald R. (Reginald Robinson) | Beresford, Charles William De la Poer Beresford, Baron |
| Words | 190,433 | 189,725 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 42m | 12h 39m |
| Unique words | 9,900 | 14,195 |
| Sentences | 9,279 | 9,206 |
| Average sentence length | 20.5 words | 20.6 words |
| Reading grade | 9.9 | 9.7 |
| Reading ease | 60.8 | 62.1 |
| Long words | 11.6% | 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 = |190,433 − 189,725| = 708 words 708 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 or The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford?
London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is longer — 190,433 words against 189,725 for The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford, a difference of 708 words or about 3 min of extra reading. London and the Kingdom - Volume 2 is the harder read, at grade 9.9 against 9.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 20990 and no. 50508 — 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.
