Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) vs The three musketeers
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
2,918words between them — 12 min of it
Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is longer — 233,655 words against 230,737 for The three musketeers, a difference of 2,918 words or about 12 min of extra reading. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 12.6 against 9.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) | The three musketeers | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Plutarch | Dumas, Alexandre |
| Words | 233,655 | 230,737 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 15h 35m | 15h 23m |
| Unique words | 13,196 | 10,553 |
| Sentences | 8,109 | 9,990 |
| Average sentence length | 28.8 words | 23.1 words |
| Reading grade | 12.6 | 9.7 |
| Reading ease | 55.9 | 66.4 |
| Long words | 10.3% | 9.2% |
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 = |233,655 − 230,737| = 2,918 words 2,918 ÷ 250 wpm = 12 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) or The three musketeers?
Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is longer — 233,655 words against 230,737 for The three musketeers, a difference of 2,918 words or about 12 min of extra reading. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 12.6 against 9.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 14140 and no. 1257 — 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.
