Nicholas Nickleby vs The Journal of Sir Walter Scott
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,512words between them — 6 min of it
Nicholas Nickleby is longer — 322,429 words against 320,917 for The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, a difference of 1,512 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Nicholas Nickleby is the harder read, at grade 10 against 6.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Nicholas Nickleby | The Journal of Sir Walter Scott | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dickens, Charles | Scott, Walter |
| Words | 322,429 | 320,917 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 21h 30m | 21h 24m |
| Unique words | 17,529 | 21,467 |
| Sentences | 13,950 | 21,807 |
| Average sentence length | 23.1 words | 14.7 words |
| Reading grade | 10 | 6.9 |
| Reading ease | 64.7 | 71.9 |
| Long words | 9.6% | 9.9% |
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 = |322,429 − 320,917| = 1,512 words 1,512 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Nicholas Nickleby or The Journal of Sir Walter Scott?
Nicholas Nickleby is longer — 322,429 words against 320,917 for The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, a difference of 1,512 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Nicholas Nickleby is the harder read, at grade 10 against 6.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 967 and no. 14860 — 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.
