The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 vs Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
394words between them — 2 min of it
The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 is longer — 179,403 words against 179,009 for Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1, a difference of 394 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1 is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 | Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Stevenson, Burton Egbert | Roscher, Wilhelm |
| Words | 179,403 | 179,009 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 11h 58m | 11h 56m |
| Unique words | 14,122 | 14,576 |
| Sentences | 7,781 | 9,203 |
| Average sentence length | 23.1 words | 19.5 words |
| Reading grade | 8 | 10.6 |
| Reading ease | 78.9 | 53.4 |
| Long words | 3.4% | 15.3% |
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 = |179,403 − 179,009| = 394 words 394 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 or Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1?
The Home Book of Verse — Volume 2 is longer — 179,403 words against 179,009 for Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1, a difference of 394 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1 is the harder read, at grade 10.6 against 8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2620 and no. 27698 — 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.
