That Which Hath Wings vs Great Expectations
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
740words between them — 3 min of it
That Which Hath Wings is longer — 186,233 words against 185,493 for Great Expectations, a difference of 740 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Great Expectations is the harder read, at grade 9 against 8.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| That Which Hath Wings | Great Expectations | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dehan, Richard | Dickens, Charles |
| Words | 186,233 | 185,493 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 12h 25m | 12h 22m |
| Unique words | 18,946 | 11,364 |
| Sentences | 9,819 | 8,014 |
| Average sentence length | 19 words | 23.1 words |
| Reading grade | 8.4 | 9 |
| Reading ease | 68.9 | 71.6 |
| Long words | 8.7% | 6.9% |
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 = |186,233 − 185,493| = 740 words 740 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, That Which Hath Wings or Great Expectations?
That Which Hath Wings is longer — 186,233 words against 185,493 for Great Expectations, a difference of 740 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Great Expectations is the harder read, at grade 9 against 8.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 51428 and no. 1400 — 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.
