The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia vs Nicholas Nickleby
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
21,856words between them — 1h 27m of it
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is longer — 344,285 words against 322,429 for Nicholas Nickleby, a difference of 21,856 words or about 1h 27m of extra reading. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is the harder read, at grade 18.4 against 10.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia | Nicholas Nickleby | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Sidney, Philip | Dickens, Charles |
| Words | 344,285 | 322,429 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 22h 57m | 21h 30m |
| Unique words | 14,380 | 17,529 |
| Sentences | 7,520 | 13,950 |
| Average sentence length | 45.8 words | 23.1 words |
| Reading grade | 18.4 | 10 |
| Reading ease | 44.4 | 64.7 |
| Long words | 8.2% | 9.6% |
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 = |344,285 − 322,429| = 21,856 words 21,856 ÷ 250 wpm = 1h 27m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia or Nicholas Nickleby?
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is longer — 344,285 words against 322,429 for Nicholas Nickleby, a difference of 21,856 words or about 1h 27m of extra reading. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is the harder read, at grade 18.4 against 10.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 70854 and no. 967 — 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.
