The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete vs Lord Milner's Work in South Africa
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
224words between them — 1 min of it
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is longer — 161,775 words against 161,551 for Lord Milner's Work in South Africa, a difference of 224 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is the harder read, at grade 19.7 against 13.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete | Lord Milner's Work in South Africa | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Smollett, T. (Tobias) | Worsfold, W. Basil (William Basil) |
| Words | 161,775 | 161,551 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 47m | 10h 46m |
| Unique words | 11,438 | 9,783 |
| Sentences | 3,647 | 5,915 |
| Average sentence length | 44.4 words | 27.3 words |
| Reading grade | 19.7 | 13.8 |
| Reading ease | 32.6 | 44.4 |
| Long words | 13.7% | 17% |
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 = |161,775 − 161,551| = 224 words 224 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete or Lord Milner's Work in South Africa?
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is longer — 161,775 words against 161,551 for Lord Milner's Work in South Africa, a difference of 224 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete is the harder read, at grade 19.7 against 13.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 6761 and no. 26490 — 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.
