The Moonstone vs More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
3,594words between them — 14 min of it
The Moonstone is longer — 196,561 words against 192,967 for More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1, a difference of 3,594 words or about 14 min of extra reading. More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 is the harder read, at grade 8.8 against 7.2.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Moonstone | More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Collins, Wilkie | Darwin, Charles |
| Words | 196,561 | 192,967 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 13h 06m | 12h 52m |
| Unique words | 9,222 | 12,411 |
| Sentences | 11,522 | 10,875 |
| Average sentence length | 17.1 words | 17.7 words |
| Reading grade | 7.2 | 8.8 |
| Reading ease | 74.1 | 63.4 |
| Long words | 8.1% | 12.2% |
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 = |196,561 − 192,967| = 3,594 words 3,594 ÷ 250 wpm = 14 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Moonstone or More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1?
The Moonstone is longer — 196,561 words against 192,967 for More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1, a difference of 3,594 words or about 14 min of extra reading. More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 is the harder read, at grade 8.8 against 7.2.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 155 and no. 2739 — 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.
