The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy vs Boswell's Life of Johnson
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
447words between them — 2 min of it
The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy is longer — 217,532 words against 217,085 for Boswell's Life of Johnson, a difference of 447 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy is the harder read, at grade 10.2 against 9.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy | Boswell's Life of Johnson | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Sienkiewicz, Henryk | Boswell, James |
| Words | 217,532 | 217,085 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 14h 30m | 14h 28m |
| Unique words | 10,255 | 12,658 |
| Sentences | 8,676 | 10,001 |
| Average sentence length | 25.1 words | 21.7 words |
| Reading grade | 10.2 | 9.6 |
| Reading ease | 66.3 | 65.1 |
| Long words | 7% | 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 = |217,532 − 217,085| = 447 words 447 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy or Boswell's Life of Johnson?
The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy is longer — 217,532 words against 217,085 for Boswell's Life of Johnson, a difference of 447 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy is the harder read, at grade 10.2 against 9.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 9473 and no. 1564 — 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.
