"Hemingway wrote at a fourth-grade level" is repeated everywhere and traces to one 2015 blog post that scored samples with online calculators[1][2]. This study scores the full text of 313 public-domain classics from Project Gutenberg on six formulas, a passive-voice detector and the Orwellix engine, publishes every number, and keeps a separate, cited table of Lexile and ATOS levels for the modern titles we cannot legally run.
11.7median Orwellix grade, three passages per book
69%of novels below grade 9 on Flesch-Kincaid
19.2words per sentence, median book
01
Key findings
Whatthefull textssay.
Each finding is a complete, citable sentence with its number. Formulas were computed on the whole text; the Orwellix grade is the mean of three 1,000-word passages at 20%, 50% and 80% of the book.
The median famous book reads at grade 8.1 on Flesch-Kincaid and grade 11.7 on Orwellix's four-dimensional analysis, across 313 public-domain titles and 32,407,067 words.
Median Flesch Reading Ease 71.5; median sentence 19.2 words; median 12.3% of sentences with a passive.
69% of the novels score below grade 9 on Flesch-Kincaid. On Orwellix, 5% do.
Snow's 2015 article reported that no bestseller in its sample scored above 9th grade on Flesch-Kincaid. The formula's result holds for the classics too; the engine's reading of the same prose does not.
Children's classics sit at a median Flesch-Kincaid grade of 7.2 against 8.1 for adult novels; on Orwellix the gap is 11.7 to 11.6.
40 children's books, 188 novels. Children's books from this era were read aloud by adults, which is why Alice and The Water-Babies score where they do.
Nonfiction is the hard end: a median Flesch-Kincaid grade of 12.0 and Orwellix grade of 13.3 across 37 works of philosophy, history, science and memoir.
Plato, Hobbes, Smith, Darwin and Franklin are in this group; the median sentence runs 27.1 words.
Prose got easier on the formulas over two centuries: books from before 1800 have a median Flesch-Kincaid grade of 11.1 and a median sentence of 27.4 words; books from 1900 to 1930 score 6.8 with 17.0-word sentences.
Sentence length is what moved. Syllables per word barely changed across the eras, which is why the formulas track the century so closely.
Flesch-Kincaid and Orwellix agree on the ranking more than on the number: correlation 0.68 across books, and the engine runs +2.8 grades above the formula on average.
Only 6% of books land within one grade on both. The engine reads vocabulary rarity and clause structure that the formula cannot see, so plain-worded but densely built prose moves up.
On Flesch-Kincaid the hardest book here is Tristram Shandy (Sterne, grade 39.3) and the easiest is The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway, grade 3.3).
On Orwellix: hardest A Modest Proposal (15.0), easiest Hedda Gabler (7.3).
The same book is not one level. Across the three passages the engine scored per book, the grade moved by 2.1 grades on average between the easiest and hardest passage.
Dialogue chapters score low, descriptive and reflective chapters high. MetaMetrics' own chapter guides show the same spread: The Grapes of Wrath runs from 460L to 1240L by chapter.
02
Thirty famous titles
Thebookspeopleaskabout,side by side.
Bars are the Orwellix grade; the amber tick is the Flesch-Kincaid grade of the whole text. Where the tick sits left of the bar's end, the formula reads the book as easier than the engine does.
Reading levels of thirty famous books
Orwellix four-dimension grade and Flesch-Kincaid grade, public-domain texts
Orwellix grade is the mean of three passages; the per-passage results are in the table rows and the CSV. Flesch-Kincaid uses the 1975 Navy coefficients on every sentence of the book.
Medians per group. Works read in translation are included and flagged in the table; the score describes the translator's English.
Median reading level by category and era
6 categories and 4 eras, 313 books
Top bar: median Flesch-Kincaid grade on the whole text. Bottom bar: median Orwellix grade. Poetry and plays are scored on their lines as sentences, which the formulas handle poorly; treat those rows as indicative.
Median readability by category and era
Novels
188
8.1
11.6
71.2
18.9
1.37
12.5
Children's books
40
7.2
11.7
78.1
18.8
1.3
10.9
Short stories
17
6.9
10.7
76.5
17.1
1.34
11.3
Nonfiction
37
12.0
13.3
54.1
27.1
1.46
26.7
Plays
22
5.5
10.2
81.2
14.4
1.29
4.5
Poetry and epic
9
11.5
13.3
66.7
30.7
1.29
9.1
Before 1800
46
11.1
13.3
62.6
27.4
1.38
17.4
1800 to 1849
43
9.6
12.4
65.1
22.1
1.41
17.2
1850 to 1899
112
8.1
11.8
71.2
19.6
1.37
13.0
1900 to 1930
112
6.8
10.9
75.9
17.0
1.36
9.4
Showing 10 of 10 rows
04
All 313 books
Everybook,everymeasure.
Search a title or author, sort any column, open a row for the other four formulas, the three engine passages and the Project Gutenberg text.
Reading levels of famous public-domain books
A Christmas Carol Dickens · 1843
Novel
10.8
7.0
77.1
18.3
12.7
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Twain · 1889
Novel
12.4
8.9
70.9
22.4
13.2
A Doll's House Ibsen · 1879 · translation
Play
8.7
3.8
86.9
10.7
3.0
A Farewell to Arms Hemingway · 1929
Novel
8.1
3.3
90.0
10.5
3.5
A Hero of Our Time Lermontov · 1840 · translation
Novel
10.3
7.3
72.4
16.6
14.0
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth Verne · 1864 · translation
Novel
11.4
8.3
66.5
17.5
15.4
A Little Princess Burnett · 1905
Children's
11.7
6.1
79.1
15.5
13.7
A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare · 1600
Play
11.1
5.4
81.9
14.4
3.8
A Modest Proposal Swift · 1729
Nonfiction
15.0
21.7
31.2
51.7
45.6
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce · 1916
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea Verne · 1870 · translation
Novel
9.1
8.2
67.9
17.7
12.8
Twenty Years After Dumas · 1845 · translation
Novel
11.6
8.2
71.3
19.6
15.0
Twenty Years at Hull-House Addams · 1910
Nonfiction
14.2
17.5
37.5
38.3
37.3
Ulysses Joyce · 1922
Novel
8.5
6.9
72.3
15.0
4.7
Uncle Remus Harris · 1881
Children's
15.0
7.6
78.8
21.5
4.0
Uncle Tom's Cabin Stowe · 1852
Novel
10.7
8.4
72.3
20.9
13.2
Uncle Vanya Chekhov · 1898 · translation
Play
8.7
4.6
81.3
10.8
6.2
Up from Slavery Washington · 1901
Nonfiction
13.3
10.7
62.5
24.8
21.8
Vanity Fair Thackeray · 1848
Novel
12.5
9.7
65.1
22.1
16.8
Villette Charlotte Brontë · 1853
Novel
11.7
9.0
67.9
21.0
15.3
Walden Thoreau · 1854
Nonfiction
14.5
12.0
61.1
29.3
20.7
War and Peace Tolstoy · 1869 · translation
Novel
11.1
8.7
68.9
20.4
14.2
Washington Square Henry James · 1880
Novel
10.7
7.3
72.3
16.5
11.3
Where Angels Fear to Tread Forster · 1905
Novel
9.8
5.7
76.8
12.7
8.5
White Fang London · 1906
Novel
10.4
6.3
77.8
15.7
11.8
Whose Body? Sayers · 1923
Novel
9.7
6.8
73.9
15.5
8.9
Winesburg, Ohio Anderson · 1919
Short stories
10.5
6.6
78.1
17.1
11.3
Winnie-the-Pooh Milne · 1926
Children's
10.1
5.9
82.5
16.6
3.3
Women in Love Lawrence · 1920
Novel
11.2
5.9
76.9
13.5
7.6
Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë · 1847
Novel
10.3
7.9
72.4
18.9
10.3
Zuleika Dobson Beerbohm · 1911
Novel
10.6
5.9
77.9
13.9
9.1
Showing 313 of 313 rows75 of the 313 books are English translations. Formulas use a dictionary-free syllable count, the same for every book, so scores are comparable with each other and within about a third of a grade of dictionary-based tools.
05
The Hemingway claim
DidHemingwaywriteatafourth-gradelevel?
The claim's source never states the number in its text; it appears only in a chart image, for a book still in copyright. Here are his public-domain books on the full text.
The Sun Also Rises (1926)FK 3.3Orwellix 9.6 · Reading Ease 90.0 · 10.6 words per sentence · 3.9% passive
Men Without Women (1927)FK 3.7Orwellix 9.6 · Reading Ease 89.1 · 11.4 words per sentence · 4.9% passive
In Our Time (1925)FK 4.9Orwellix 9.2 · Reading Ease 83.6 · 13.4 words per sentence · 5.6% passive
A Farewell to Arms (1929)FK 3.3Orwellix 8.1 · Reading Ease 90.0 · 10.5 words per sentence · 3.5% passive
Shane Snow's 2015 Contently article ran "samples" of books through five online calculators and reported Flesch-Kincaid grades; its prose says The Old Man and the Sea reads at an "elementary school" level and that bestsellers scored "none above 9th grade"[1][2]. Every later page that gives Hemingway a fourth-grade number cites that article[3]. The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is in copyright until 2048, so it is not scored here; its published Lexile is 940L and its ATOS level 5.1, both in the cited table below.
On his public-domain books the formula's verdict is a Flesch-Kincaid grade between 3.3 and 4.9, driven by sentences of 10.5 to 13.4 words. The engine reads the same prose at grade 8.1 to 9.6: short sentences, but strung with coordinated clauses and a vocabulary that is plain without being childish.
Mark Liberman's 2015 Language Log piece shows why the formula alone cannot settle this: the same passage scored grade 4.4, 8.5 or 12.5 depending only on how it was punctuated, and a scrambled gibberish passage scored 3.9[4].
06
Formula versus engine
Wheretwocountsandfourdimensionspartways.
Same passages, two readings. The formula sees sentence length and syllables; the engine also sees how the clauses are built, how rare the words are, and how the sentences connect.
0.68correlation of Flesch-Kincaid and Orwellix grades across books
0.67correlation on the 938 individual passages
+2.8grades: the engine's average distance above the formula
6%of books land within one grade on both
The two measures rank the books similarly and place them differently. That is expected: Flesch-Kincaid was fitted in 1975 to Navy manuals and predicts a grade from two averages[5], and later research found that classic formulas explain only a quarter to a third of the difficulty that human raters see. The engine's grade is higher for prose that is plain in word length but dense in structure, which describes most nineteenth-century fiction, and closer to the formula for straightforward narrative. Neither number is the reader's experience of the book; both are descriptions of the prose, and the engine's comes with the hard sentences marked rather than averaged away.
For the formulas themselves, their coefficients and what each one misses, see the Readability Score Reference.
07
Modern titles
In-copyrightbooks:cited,notcomputed.
We do not run copyrighted text through the engine. For these titles the table reports the published Lexile and ATOS levels and links to where each figure was read, with primary MetaMetrics documents marked.
Published Lexile and ATOS levels for in-copyright famous books
Source
1984 George Orwell · 1949
1090L
8.9
MetaMetrics (primary)
All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque · 1929
830L
–
secondary
Animal Farm George Orwell · 1945
1170L
–
secondary
Beloved Toni Morrison · 1987
870L
–
secondary
Brave New World Aldous Huxley · 1932
870L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
Charlotte's Web E.B. White · 1952
680L
4.4
MetaMetrics (primary)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Jeff Kinney · 2007
950L
5.2
secondary
Ender's Game Orson Scott Card · 1985
780L
–
secondary
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury · 1953
890L
5.2
MetaMetrics (primary)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets J.K. Rowling · 1998
940L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone J.K. Rowling · 1997
880L
–
secondary
Hatchet Gary Paulsen · 1986
1020L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
Holes Louis Sachar · 1998
660L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
Life of Pi Yann Martel · 2001
830L
–
secondary
Lord of the Flies William Golding · 1954
770L
5.0
MetaMetrics (primary)
Night Elie Wiesel · 1956
590L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck · 1937
630L
4.5
MetaMetrics (primary)
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
850L
–
secondary
The Book Thief Markus Zusak · 2005
730L
–
secondary
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger · 1951
790L
–
secondary
The Color Purple Alice Walker · 1982
670L
–
secondary
The Fault in Our Stars John Green · 2012
850L
–
secondary
The Giver Lois Lowry · 1993
760L
5.7
MetaMetrics (primary)
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck · 1939
680L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
1070L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood · 1985
750L
–
secondary
The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien · 1937
1000L
6.6
MetaMetrics (primary)
The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins · 2008
810L
5.3
secondary
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini · 2003
840L
–
secondary
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway · 1952
940L
5.1
secondary
The Outsiders S.E. Hinton · 1967
750L
–
MetaMetrics (primary)
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee · 1960
870L (current Hub); 790L in the 2015 MetaMetrics guide
5.6
MetaMetrics (primary)
Wonder R.J. Palacio · 2012
790L
4.8
secondary
Showing 33 of 33 rowsLexile and ATOS are different scales and do not convert to each other. Lexile measures change when MetaMetrics re-measures an edition, so cite the year with the number.
08
Method, limitations, data
Howthebookswerescored.
Method
Titles were chosen as a curated list of widely taught and widely read works, matched to Project Gutenberg's catalog by title and author[12], and limited to works published before 1931, the US public-domain line for 2026[11]. Each ebook's plain text was downloaded once, the Gutenberg header and licence stripped, and paragraphs of fewer than 12 words (6 for verse and plays), headings and tables removed.
Formulas (Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, ARI) were computed on the whole prose with their published coefficients and one dictionary-free syllable heuristic.
Passive share uses the detector from the Passive Voice Index (precision 92% on a blind sample) on an evenly spaced sample of up to 20,000 words per book.
The Orwellix grade is the engine's result on three passages of about 1,000 words starting at 20%, 50% and 80% of the book, reported per passage and as a mean. The engine returns one grade with the hard sentences marked; the same free checker is available to anyone.
Limitations
Project Gutenberg editions vary: some are early printings with archaic spelling, some include prefaces or notes that the paragraph filter may keep. Each row links to the ebook so the text can be checked.
75 works are translations. Their scores describe the translator's English, often Victorian, not the original.
Verse and plays are poor fits for sentence-based formulas; their rows are kept for completeness and flagged by category.
The Orwellix grade rests on three passages, not the whole book. The per-passage spread, 2.1 grades on average, is published so the uncertainty is visible.
The in-copyright table relies on secondary pages for many titles because the Lexile Hub and AR BookFinder are interactive-only; primary MetaMetrics documents are marked.
No modern bestseller is scored. Snow's comparison of bestsellers with classics cannot be reproduced without their texts.
Tables, charts and the CSVs are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with a link to this page. The texts are Project Gutenberg's.
09
Sources
52documents,eachoneopened.
The claim being checked, the formula papers, the public-domain rule, and one entry for every page a cited Lexile or ATOS level was read from.
Snow, S. (n.d.). What Reading Level Should You Write At?. shanesnow.com (same text and charts as the 2015 Contently article, which now redirects). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Snow, S. (2019). Ernest Hemingway Wrote for Kids, And So Should You. The Content Strategist (Contently), 24 Jan 2019, reprint of the 2015 article. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Kowalczyk, O. (2019). What do reading level tests say about bestselling books?. Ebook Friendly, 20 May 2019 (reads Snow's chart). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Liberman, M. (2015). More Flesch-Kincaid grade-level nonsense. Language Log, University of Pennsylvania. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Kincaid, J. P., Fishburne, R. P., Rogers, R. L., & Chissom, B. S. (1975). Derivation of new readability formulas for Navy enlisted personnel. Research Branch Report 8-75, Naval Air Station Memphis. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Flesch, R. (1949). The Art of Readable Writing. Harper & Brothers, New York (scan at archive.org). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: The Great Gatsby. lexile.com PDF; whole-book 1070L, 'frequently taught in' 12th grade, band 1185L to 1385L. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2013). The Lexile Map. copy hosted by the Wyoming Department of Education. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Gewertz, C. (2012). New Research Expands Thinking on Text Complexity. Education Week, 15 Aug 2012. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
University of South Florida, Lit2Go (n.d.). Frequently asked questions (Flesch-Kincaid levels for public-domain texts). etc.usf.edu. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Cornell University Library (2026). Copyright Term and the Public Domain. chart current as of 1 January 2026. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Project Gutenberg (2026). Project Gutenberg catalog (pg_catalog.csv). used to match titles and authors to ebook numbers. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Project Gutenberg (2026). Search results for Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises #67138, Men Without Women #69683, A Farewell to Arms #75201, In Our Time #61085. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: To Kill a Mockingbird. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). To Kill a Mockingbird (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Catcher in the Rye (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: 1984. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). 1984 (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Animal Farm (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Old Man and the Sea (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Mind Resources (n.d.). The Old Man and the Sea (vendor listing with Lexile and ATOS). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Of Mice and Men. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Of Mice and Men (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: The Grapes of Wrath. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Lord of the Flies. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Lord of the Flies (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Fahrenheit 451. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Fahrenheit 451 (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Brave New World. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
Mind Resources (n.d.). The Hobbit (vendor listing with Lexile and ATOS). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Hunger Games (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Charlotte's Web. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Charlotte's Web (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: The Giver. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Giver (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Holes. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Wonder (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Fault in Our Stars (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Kite Runner (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Life of Pi (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Beloved (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Color Purple (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Slaughterhouse-Five (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Handmaid's Tale (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). The Book Thief (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). Ender's Game (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
readinglist.school (n.d.). All Quiet on the Western Front (Lexile measure cited from the Lexile Hub by ISBN). secondary. SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Night. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: The Outsiders. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
MetaMetrics (2015). Lexile by Chapter: Hatchet. lexile.com PDF (primary). SourceOpened 23 Oct 2026
10
Cite and track
Citethispage.
Cite this page
APA
Orwellix. (2026). Reading Levels of Famous Books. Orwellix. https://orwellix.com/resources/reading-levels-of-famous-books
Plain
Reading Levels of Famous Books (Orwellix, 2026): https://orwellix.com/resources/reading-levels-of-famous-books
First published 24 Oct 2026. Reuse the tables and charts with attribution under CC BY 4.0.
Changelog
First edition: public-domain titles from Project Gutenberg scored on six classic formulas, a passive-voice detector and the Orwellix engine on three passages each; cited Lexile and ATOS levels for in-copyright titles.
11
Questions
Thequestionsthispagegetsasked.
01Did Hemingway really write at a fourth-grade level?+
The claim comes from a 2015 Contently article by Shane Snow that ran samples of books through five readability calculators. Its text never gives Hemingway a number; the 'fourth grade' lives only in a chart image, for The Old Man and the Sea, which is still in copyright and so is not scored here. His public-domain novels are: the computed table shows The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Men Without Women and In Our Time on six formulas and on Orwellix's four-dimensional analysis. Short sentences do give him a low Flesch-Kincaid grade; the engine, which reads vocabulary and sentence structure as well, places him higher.
02What grade level is The Great Gatsby?+
Depends on the measure. MetaMetrics gives it 1070L, which falls in the grade 6 to 8 Common Core band although it is usually taught in 12th grade. On the full Project Gutenberg text, this study's Flesch-Kincaid grade and Orwellix grade are in the table above, with the chapters that drive them.
03Why do Flesch-Kincaid and Orwellix disagree on the same book?+
Flesch-Kincaid counts two things: words per sentence and syllables per word. It was fitted in 1975 to Navy training manuals. A novel of short sentences and plain words scores low on it even when the sentences are syntactically dense or the vocabulary is rare for a child. Orwellix scores four dimensions of each sentence (structural complexity, lexical sophistication, writing clarity, text coherence) and reports a grade with the hard sentences marked. The agreement section gives the correlation between the two on the same passages and the typical size of the gap.
04Why are only books before 1931 scored?+
Because running copyrighted text through the engine would be a reproduction we have no licence for. In the United States, works published before 1 January 1931 are in the public domain as of 2026. Modern titles appear in the separate cited table with their published Lexile or ATOS levels, each linked to where the figure was read.
05Is a Lexile the same as a grade level?+
No. A Lexile measures text on a scale from below 200L to above 1600L and is matched to readers who take a Lexile-linked test. Common Core publishes grade bands (for example 925L to 1185L for grades 6 to 8), which is how a Lexile gets translated into a grade in school. ATOS, used by Accelerated Reader, reports a grade directly, and the two scales do not convert to each other.
06Can I reuse the table?+
Yes. The tables, chart and per-book CSV are CC BY 4.0; link to this page. The texts themselves are Project Gutenberg's, and each row links to the ebook.
