The Amazing Marriage — Complete vs The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,129words between them — 5 min of it
The Amazing Marriage — Complete is longer — 156,488 words against 155,359 for The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I, a difference of 1,129 words or about 5 min of extra reading. The Amazing Marriage — Complete is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Amazing Marriage — Complete | The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Meredith, George | Behn, Aphra |
| Words | 156,488 | 155,359 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 26m | 10h 21m |
| Unique words | 14,758 | 12,002 |
| Sentences | 8,044 | 15,441 |
| Average sentence length | 19.5 words | 10.1 words |
| Reading grade | 8.5 | 4 |
| Reading ease | 69 | 84.1 |
| Long words | 8.9% | 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 = |156,488 − 155,359| = 1,129 words 1,129 ÷ 250 wpm = 5 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Amazing Marriage — Complete or The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I?
The Amazing Marriage — Complete is longer — 156,488 words against 155,359 for The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume I, a difference of 1,129 words or about 5 min of extra reading. The Amazing Marriage — Complete is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 4488 and no. 21339 — 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.
