The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete vs The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
496,614words between them — 33h 06m of it
The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is longer — 1,275,777 words against 779,163 for The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen, a difference of 496,614 words or about 33h 06m of extra reading. The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 9.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete | The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Pepys, Samuel | Austen, Jane |
| Words | 1,275,777 | 779,163 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 85h 03m | 51h 57m |
| Unique words | 22,812 | 18,399 |
| Sentences | 48,531 | 33,171 |
| Average sentence length | 26.3 words | 23.5 words |
| Reading grade | 9.8 | 10.3 |
| Reading ease | 71.8 | 63.3 |
| Long words | 5.2% | 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 = |1,275,777 − 779,163| = 496,614 words 496,614 ÷ 250 wpm = 33h 06m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete or The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen?
The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is longer — 1,275,777 words against 779,163 for The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen, a difference of 496,614 words or about 33h 06m of extra reading. The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 9.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 4200 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.
