The String of Pearls vs The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
3,502words between them — 14 min of it
The String of Pearls is longer — 437,085 words against 433,583 for The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete, a difference of 3,502 words or about 14 min of extra reading. The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete is the harder read, at grade 9.3 against 8.9.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The String of Pearls | The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Prest, Thomas Peckett | Forster, John |
| Words | 437,085 | 433,583 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 29h 08m | 28h 54m |
| Unique words | 16,135 | 24,105 |
| Sentences | 18,944 | 21,343 |
| Average sentence length | 23.1 words | 20.3 words |
| Reading grade | 8.9 | 9.3 |
| Reading ease | 72.5 | 64.4 |
| Long words | 6.7% | 10.5% |
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 = |437,085 − 433,583| = 3,502 words 3,502 ÷ 250 wpm = 14 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The String of Pearls or The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete?
The String of Pearls is longer — 437,085 words against 433,583 for The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete, a difference of 3,502 words or about 14 min of extra reading. The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete is the harder read, at grade 9.3 against 8.9.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 59828 and no. 25851 — 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.
