The Beth Book vs Twenty years after
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,282words between them — 5 min of it
The Beth Book is longer — 244,604 words against 243,322 for Twenty years after, a difference of 1,282 words or about 5 min of extra reading. Twenty years after is the harder read, at grade 9.7 against 8.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Beth Book | Twenty years after | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Grand, Sarah | Dumas, Alexandre |
| Words | 244,604 | 243,322 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 16h 18m | 16h 13m |
| Unique words | 13,890 | 11,326 |
| Sentences | 11,813 | 10,245 |
| Average sentence length | 20.7 words | 23.8 words |
| Reading grade | 8.5 | 9.7 |
| Reading ease | 71.3 | 67.7 |
| Long words | 7.7% | 8.3% |
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 = |244,604 − 243,322| = 1,282 words 1,282 ÷ 250 wpm = 5 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Beth Book or Twenty years after?
The Beth Book is longer — 244,604 words against 243,322 for Twenty years after, a difference of 1,282 words or about 5 min of extra reading. Twenty years after is the harder read, at grade 9.7 against 8.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28088 and no. 1259 — 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.
