The Woman in White vs The Republic of Plato
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
852words between them — 3 min of it
The Woman in White is longer — 246,953 words against 246,101 for The Republic of Plato, a difference of 852 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The Republic of Plato is the harder read, at grade 8.8 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 Republic of Plato | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Collins, Wilkie | Plato |
| Words | 246,953 | 246,101 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 16h 28m | 16h 24m |
| Unique words | 10,567 | 12,128 |
| Sentences | 12,352 | 12,802 |
| Average sentence length | 20 words | 19.2 words |
| Reading grade | 8.4 | 8.8 |
| Reading ease | 70.1 | 66.3 |
| Long words | 8.7% | 10.9% |
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 − 246,101| = 852 words 852 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Woman in White or The Republic of Plato?
The Woman in White is longer — 246,953 words against 246,101 for The Republic of Plato, a difference of 852 words or about 3 min of extra reading. The Republic of Plato is the harder read, at grade 8.8 against 8.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 583 and no. 55201 — 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.
