The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 vs Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
5,415words between them — 22 min of it
The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is longer — 428,889 words against 423,474 for Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete, a difference of 5,415 words or about 22 min of extra reading. The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is the harder read, at grade 13 against 10.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 | Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Reynolds, George W. M. (George William MacArthur) | Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de |
| Words | 428,889 | 423,474 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 28h 36m | 28h 14m |
| Unique words | 22,863 | 14,859 |
| Sentences | 15,063 | 17,966 |
| Average sentence length | 28.5 words | 23.6 words |
| Reading grade | 13 | 10.3 |
| Reading ease | 52.4 | 63.2 |
| Long words | 12% | 9.5% |
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 − 423,474| = 5,415 words 5,415 ÷ 250 wpm = 22 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 or Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete?
The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is longer — 428,889 words against 423,474 for Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete, a difference of 5,415 words or about 22 min of extra reading. The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4 is the harder read, at grade 13 against 10.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 51649 and no. 3875 — 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.
