The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 vs Celebrated Crimes (Complete)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
27,460words between them — 1h 50m of it
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 is longer — 650,247 words against 622,787 for Celebrated Crimes (Complete), a difference of 27,460 words or about 1h 50m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 10.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 | Celebrated Crimes (Complete) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Lewis, Meriwether | Dumas, Alexandre |
| Words | 650,247 | 622,787 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 43h 21m | 41h 31m |
| Unique words | 20,509 | 22,062 |
| Sentences | 26,085 | 19,086 |
| Average sentence length | 24.9 words | 32.6 words |
| Reading grade | 10 | 13.8 |
| Reading ease | 67.8 | 54 |
| Long words | 6.8% | 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 = |650,247 − 622,787| = 27,460 words 27,460 ÷ 250 wpm = 1h 50m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 or Celebrated Crimes (Complete)?
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 is longer — 650,247 words against 622,787 for Celebrated Crimes (Complete), a difference of 27,460 words or about 1h 50m of extra reading. Celebrated Crimes (Complete) is the harder read, at grade 13.8 against 10.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 8419 and no. 2760 — 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.
