The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 vs Searchlights on Health
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
518words between them — 2 min of it
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 is longer — 133,949 words against 133,431 for Searchlights on Health, a difference of 518 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Searchlights on Health is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 | Searchlights on Health | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Stevenson, Robert Louis | Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant) |
| Words | 133,949 | 133,431 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 56m | 8h 54m |
| Unique words | 12,699 | 12,040 |
| Sentences | 6,747 | 8,129 |
| Average sentence length | 19.9 words | 16.4 words |
| Reading grade | 8 | 8.7 |
| Reading ease | 72.7 | 62.3 |
| Long words | 7.6% | 12.8% |
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 = |133,949 − 133,431| = 518 words 518 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 or Searchlights on Health?
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20 is longer — 133,949 words against 133,431 for Searchlights on Health, a difference of 518 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Searchlights on Health is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 30849 and no. 23609 — 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.
