Moby Dick vs Leviathan
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,113words between them — 4 min of it
Moby Dick is longer — 213,380 words against 212,267 for Leviathan, a difference of 1,113 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Leviathan is the harder read, at grade 16.3 against 10.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Moby Dick | Leviathan | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Melville, Herman | Hobbes, Thomas |
| Words | 213,380 | 212,267 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 14h 14m | 14h 09m |
| Unique words | 18,600 | 9,658 |
| Sentences | 8,604 | 5,576 |
| Average sentence length | 24.8 words | 38.1 words |
| Reading grade | 10.6 | 16.3 |
| Reading ease | 63.1 | 45.8 |
| Long words | 8.9% | 12% |
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 = |213,380 − 212,267| = 1,113 words 1,113 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Moby Dick or Leviathan?
Moby Dick is longer — 213,380 words against 212,267 for Leviathan, a difference of 1,113 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Leviathan is the harder read, at grade 16.3 against 10.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2489 and no. 3207 — 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.
