The Pickwick Papers vs Jesus the Christ
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
4,032words between them — 16 min of it
The Pickwick Papers is longer — 300,355 words against 296,323 for Jesus the Christ, a difference of 4,032 words or about 16 min of extra reading. Jesus the Christ is the harder read, at grade 11.8 against 7.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Pickwick Papers | Jesus the Christ | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Dickens, Charles | Talmage, James E. (James Edward) |
| Words | 300,355 | 296,323 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 20h 01m | 19h 45m |
| Unique words | 17,580 | 14,123 |
| Sentences | 17,676 | 11,550 |
| Average sentence length | 17 words | 25.7 words |
| Reading grade | 7.8 | 11.8 |
| Reading ease | 69.6 | 56.1 |
| Long words | 9.1% | 11.8% |
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 = |300,355 − 296,323| = 4,032 words 4,032 ÷ 250 wpm = 16 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Pickwick Papers or Jesus the Christ?
The Pickwick Papers is longer — 300,355 words against 296,323 for Jesus the Christ, a difference of 4,032 words or about 16 min of extra reading. Jesus the Christ is the harder read, at grade 11.8 against 7.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 580 and no. 22542 — 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.
