The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 vs The City of God, Volume I
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
681words between them — 3 min of it
The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is longer — 230,666 words against 229,985 for The City of God, Volume I, a difference of 681 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The City of God, Volume I is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 10.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 | The City of God, Volume I | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Victoria, Queen of Great Britain | Augustine, of Hippo, Saint |
| Words | 230,666 | 229,985 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 15h 23m | 15h 20m |
| Unique words | 13,437 | 11,979 |
| Sentences | 11,294 | 7,114 |
| Average sentence length | 20.4 words | 32.3 words |
| Reading grade | 10.3 | 13.6 |
| Reading ease | 57.4 | 54.8 |
| Long words | 13.9% | 10.1% |
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 = |230,666 − 229,985| = 681 words 681 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 or The City of God, Volume I?
The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is longer — 230,666 words against 229,985 for The City of God, Volume I, a difference of 681 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The City of God, Volume I is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 10.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28649 and no. 45304 — 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.
