Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 vs The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,166words between them — 5 min of it
Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 is longer — 162,941 words against 161,775 for The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete, a difference of 1,166 words or about 5 min of extra reading. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is the harder read, at grade 19.7 against 11.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 | The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Makins, George Henry | Smollett, T. (Tobias) |
| Words | 162,941 | 161,775 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 52m | 10h 47m |
| Unique words | 7,443 | 11,438 |
| Sentences | 7,471 | 3,647 |
| Average sentence length | 21.8 words | 44.4 words |
| Reading grade | 11.7 | 19.7 |
| Reading ease | 50.4 | 32.6 |
| Long words | 15.6% | 13.7% |
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 = |162,941 − 161,775| = 1,166 words 1,166 ÷ 250 wpm = 5 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 or The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete?
Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 is longer — 162,941 words against 161,775 for The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete, a difference of 1,166 words or about 5 min of extra reading. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is the harder read, at grade 19.7 against 11.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21280 and no. 6761 — 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.
