The Land of Thor vs Royal Edinburgh
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,119words between them — 4 min of it
The Land of Thor is longer — 159,715 words against 158,596 for Royal Edinburgh, a difference of 1,119 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Royal Edinburgh is the harder read, at grade 18 against 11.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Land of Thor | Royal Edinburgh | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Browne, J. Ross (John Ross) | Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret) |
| Words | 159,715 | 158,596 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 39m | 10h 34m |
| Unique words | 14,417 | 13,239 |
| Sentences | 6,407 | 3,758 |
| Average sentence length | 24.9 words | 42.2 words |
| Reading grade | 11.6 | 18 |
| Reading ease | 56.4 | 41 |
| Long words | 11.8% | 11.3% |
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 = |159,715 − 158,596| = 1,119 words 1,119 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Land of Thor or Royal Edinburgh?
The Land of Thor is longer — 159,715 words against 158,596 for Royal Edinburgh, a difference of 1,119 words or about 4 min of extra reading. Royal Edinburgh is the harder read, at grade 18 against 11.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28329 and no. 25701 — 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.
