The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] vs A pair of blue eyes
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
626words between them — 3 min of it
The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] is longer — 131,881 words against 131,255 for A pair of blue eyes, a difference of 626 words or about 3 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 2.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] | A pair of blue eyes | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Shakespeare, William | Hardy, Thomas |
| Words | 131,881 | 131,255 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 48m | 8h 45m |
| Unique words | 10,662 | 10,854 |
| Sentences | 16,944 | 6,641 |
| Average sentence length | 7.8 words | 19.8 words |
| Reading grade | 2.7 | 8.4 |
| Reading ease | 89.9 | 70.3 |
| Long words | 5.5% | 8.2% |
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 = |131,881 − 131,255| = 626 words 626 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] or A pair of blue eyes?
The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9] is longer — 131,881 words against 131,255 for A pair of blue eyes, a difference of 626 words or about 3 min of extra reading. A pair of blue eyes is the harder read, at grade 8.4 against 2.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 50559 and no. 224 — 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.
