The Journal of Sir Walter Scott vs Middlemarch
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
2,372words between them — 9 min of it
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott is longer — 320,917 words against 318,545 for Middlemarch, a difference of 2,372 words or about 9 min of extra reading. Middlemarch is the harder read, at grade 9.5 against 6.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Journal of Sir Walter Scott | Middlemarch | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Scott, Walter | Eliot, George |
| Words | 320,917 | 318,545 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 21h 24m | 21h 14m |
| Unique words | 21,467 | 16,292 |
| Sentences | 21,807 | 14,565 |
| Average sentence length | 14.7 words | 21.9 words |
| Reading grade | 6.9 | 9.5 |
| Reading ease | 71.9 | 65.6 |
| Long words | 9.9% | 9.8% |
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 = |320,917 − 318,545| = 2,372 words 2,372 ÷ 250 wpm = 9 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Journal of Sir Walter Scott or Middlemarch?
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott is longer — 320,917 words against 318,545 for Middlemarch, a difference of 2,372 words or about 9 min of extra reading. Middlemarch is the harder read, at grade 9.5 against 6.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 14860 and no. 145 — 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.
