The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 vs The Girl Philippa
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
138words between them — 1 min of it
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 is longer — 129,775 words against 129,637 for The Girl Philippa, a difference of 138 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 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 Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 | The Girl Philippa | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron | Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William) |
| Words | 129,775 | 129,637 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 39m | 8h 39m |
| Unique words | 14,812 | 10,660 |
| Sentences | 5,962 | 6,721 |
| Average sentence length | 21.8 words | 19.3 words |
| Reading grade | 8.8 | 8.4 |
| Reading ease | 70.9 | 69.1 |
| Long words | 7% | 8.3% |
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 = |129,775 − 129,637| = 138 words 138 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 or The Girl Philippa?
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 is longer — 129,775 words against 129,637 for The Girl Philippa, a difference of 138 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 is the harder read, at grade 8.8 against 8.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21811 and no. 52404 — 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.
