The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete vs The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
311,422words between them — 20h 46m of it
The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is longer — 1,275,777 words against 964,355 for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a difference of 311,422 words or about 20h 46m of extra reading. The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is the harder read, at grade 9.8 against 3.5.
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 Works of William Shakespeare | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Pepys, Samuel | Shakespeare, William |
| Words | 1,275,777 | 964,355 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 85h 03m | 64h 17m |
| Unique words | 22,812 | 28,608 |
| Sentences | 48,531 | 104,450 |
| Average sentence length | 26.3 words | 9.2 words |
| Reading grade | 9.8 | 3.5 |
| Reading ease | 71.8 | 86.2 |
| Long words | 5.2% | 6.4% |
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 − 964,355| = 311,422 words 311,422 ÷ 250 wpm = 20h 46m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete or The Complete Works of William Shakespeare?
The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is longer — 1,275,777 words against 964,355 for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a difference of 311,422 words or about 20h 46m of extra reading. The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete is the harder read, at grade 9.8 against 3.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 4200 and no. 100 — 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.
