The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 vs The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
565words between them — 2 min of it
The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is longer — 230,666 words against 230,101 for The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6), a difference of 565 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 7.4.
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 Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Victoria, Queen of Great Britain | Pliny, the Elder |
| Words | 230,666 | 230,101 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 15h 23m | 15h 20m |
| Unique words | 13,437 | 13,910 |
| Sentences | 11,294 | 13,905 |
| Average sentence length | 20.4 words | 16.5 words |
| Reading grade | 10.3 | 7.4 |
| Reading ease | 57.4 | 71.3 |
| Long words | 13.9% | 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 = |230,666 − 230,101| = 565 words 565 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 or The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)?
The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is longer — 230,666 words against 230,101 for The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6), a difference of 565 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 3, 1854-1861 is the harder read, at grade 10.3 against 7.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 28649 and no. 59131 — 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.
