On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection vs The Iliad
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,558words between them — 6 min of it
On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is longer — 154,905 words against 153,347 for The Iliad, a difference of 1,558 words or about 6 min of extra reading. On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is the harder read, at grade 14.4 against 13.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection | The Iliad | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Darwin, Charles | Homer |
| Words | 154,905 | 153,347 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 20m | 10h 13m |
| Unique words | 7,231 | 7,720 |
| Sentences | 5,323 | 4,262 |
| Average sentence length | 29.1 words | 36 words |
| Reading grade | 14.4 | 13.5 |
| Reading ease | 43.7 | 62.4 |
| Long words | 15.7% | 4.7% |
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 = |154,905 − 153,347| = 1,558 words 1,558 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or The Iliad?
On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is longer — 154,905 words against 153,347 for The Iliad, a difference of 1,558 words or about 6 min of extra reading. On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is the harder read, at grade 14.4 against 13.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 1228 and no. 2199 — 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.
