The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 vs A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
19,575words between them — 1h 18m of it
The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is longer — 428,889 words against 409,314 for A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, a difference of 19,575 words or about 1h 18m of extra reading. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive is the harder read, at grade 16.7 against 13.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 | A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Reynolds, George W. M. (George William MacArthur) | Mill, John Stuart |
| Words | 428,889 | 409,314 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 28h 36m | 27h 17m |
| Unique words | 22,863 | 12,329 |
| Sentences | 15,063 | 11,677 |
| Average sentence length | 28.5 words | 35.1 words |
| Reading grade | 13 | 16.7 |
| Reading ease | 52.4 | 37.8 |
| Long words | 12% | 16.6% |
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 = |428,889 − 409,314| = 19,575 words 19,575 ÷ 250 wpm = 1h 18m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 or A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive?
The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is longer — 428,889 words against 409,314 for A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, a difference of 19,575 words or about 1h 18m of extra reading. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive is the harder read, at grade 16.7 against 13.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 51649 and no. 27942 — 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.
