The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 vs The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
442words between them — 2 min of it
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 is longer — 129,775 words against 129,333 for The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2, a difference of 442 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 is the harder read, at grade 14.4 against 8.8.
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 Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron | Marshall, John |
| Words | 129,775 | 129,333 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 39m | 8h 37m |
| Unique words | 14,812 | 7,961 |
| Sentences | 5,962 | 4,398 |
| Average sentence length | 21.8 words | 29.4 words |
| Reading grade | 8.8 | 14.4 |
| Reading ease | 70.9 | 44.4 |
| Long words | 7% | 15.3% |
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 − 129,333| = 442 words 442 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 or The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2?
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3 is longer — 129,775 words against 129,333 for The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2, a difference of 442 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 is the harder read, at grade 14.4 against 8.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 21811 and no. 18592 — 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.
