The Complete Works of William Shakespeare vs The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
185,192words between them — 12h 21m of it
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is longer — 964,355 words against 779,163 for The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen, a difference of 185,192 words or about 12h 21m of extra reading. The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 3.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Complete Works of William Shakespeare | The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Shakespeare, William | Austen, Jane |
| Words | 964,355 | 779,163 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 64h 17m | 51h 57m |
| Unique words | 28,608 | 18,399 |
| Sentences | 104,450 | 33,171 |
| Average sentence length | 9.2 words | 23.5 words |
| Reading grade | 3.5 | 10.3 |
| Reading ease | 86.2 | 63.3 |
| Long words | 6.4% | 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 = |964,355 − 779,163| = 185,192 words 185,192 ÷ 250 wpm = 12h 21m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare or The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen?
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is longer — 964,355 words against 779,163 for The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen, a difference of 185,192 words or about 12h 21m of extra reading. The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 3.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 100 and no. 31100 — 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.
