The Woman in White vs The Beth Book
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
2,349words between them — 9 min of it
The Woman in White is longer — 246,953 words against 244,604 for The Beth Book, a difference of 2,349 words or about 9 min of extra reading. The Beth Book is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 8.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Woman in White | The Beth Book | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Collins, Wilkie | Grand, Sarah |
| Words | 246,953 | 244,604 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 16h 28m | 16h 18m |
| Unique words | 10,567 | 13,890 |
| Sentences | 12,352 | 11,813 |
| Average sentence length | 20 words | 20.7 words |
| Reading grade | 8.4 | 8.5 |
| Reading ease | 70.1 | 71.3 |
| Long words | 8.7% | 7.7% |
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 = |246,953 − 244,604| = 2,349 words 2,349 ÷ 250 wpm = 9 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Woman in White or The Beth Book?
The Woman in White is longer — 246,953 words against 244,604 for The Beth Book, a difference of 2,349 words or about 9 min of extra reading. The Beth Book is the harder read, at grade 8.5 against 8.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 583 and no. 28088 — 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.
