The Book-Hunter vs The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9]
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
235words between them — 1 min of it
The Book-Hunter is longer — 132,116 words against 131,881 for The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9], a difference of 235 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Book-Hunter is the harder read, at grade 15 against 2.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Book-Hunter | The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Burton, John Hill | Shakespeare, William |
| Words | 132,116 | 131,881 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 48m | 8h 48m |
| Unique words | 15,532 | 10,662 |
| Sentences | 4,081 | 16,944 |
| Average sentence length | 32.4 words | 7.8 words |
| Reading grade | 15 | 2.7 |
| Reading ease | 44.9 | 89.9 |
| Long words | 13.9% | 5.5% |
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 = |132,116 − 131,881| = 235 words 235 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Book-Hunter or The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9]?
The Book-Hunter is longer — 132,116 words against 131,881 for The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9], a difference of 235 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Book-Hunter is the harder read, at grade 15 against 2.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 22136 and no. 50559 — 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.
