Project Cyclops vs Biographia Literaria
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,413words between them — 6 min of it
Project Cyclops is longer — 139,842 words against 138,429 for Biographia Literaria, a difference of 1,413 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 5.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Project Cyclops | Biographia Literaria | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Hoover, Thomas | Coleridge, Samuel Taylor |
| Words | 139,842 | 138,429 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 19m | 9h 14m |
| Unique words | 11,608 | 14,672 |
| Sentences | 10,889 | 4,277 |
| Average sentence length | 12.8 words | 32.4 words |
| Reading grade | 5.9 | 15 |
| Reading ease | 75.7 | 45.2 |
| Long words | 8.9% | 13.6% |
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 = |139,842 − 138,429| = 1,413 words 1,413 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Project Cyclops or Biographia Literaria?
Project Cyclops is longer — 139,842 words against 138,429 for Biographia Literaria, a difference of 1,413 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Biographia Literaria is the harder read, at grade 15 against 5.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 34319 and no. 6081 — 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.
