How does VEYL score the classics?

Ten famous novels — from Shelley to Joyce — scored by VEYL using the actual opening passage. Real numbers, no cherry-picking. Most classics score near zero: they are, after all, human.

Frankenstein Mary Shelley
0% 1818

Frankenstein

Shelley wrote this at 18. Verbose, epistolary, formal — and still reads as unmistakably human to VEYL.

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
0% 1813

Pride and Prejudice

The most famous opening line in English literature — and VEYL registers it as pure human writing.

A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
0% 1859

A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens' doubled parallelism sounds rhetorical enough to fool anyone — but VEYL sees a distinctly human hand at work.

Moby-Dick Herman Melville
1% 1851

Moby-Dick

First-person, immediate voice. Melville's rambling energy reads as human even to statistical models.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle
0% 1892

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Watson narrating Holmes: character-driven, opinionated, aside-heavy. Almost zero AI signal.

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
0% 1899

Heart of Darkness

Conrad wrote in his third language. The atmospheric frame-narrative registers as strongly human.

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
21% 1925

The Great Gatsby

Highest-scoring book so far. Polished sentence rhythm reads as mid-range — a reminder that carefully edited prose can look AI-like.

The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
0% 1915

The Metamorphosis

Translated from German. Kafka's clinical, matter-of-fact tone still scored zero — VEYL saw right through the register to the specific human beneath.

Ulysses James Joyce
0% 1922

Ulysses

Joyce's dense, allusive, multilingual prose. Zero percent AI — the strongest possible human verdict.

Dracula Bram Stoker
0% 1897

Dracula

Composed entirely of diary entries, letters, and telegrams — every voice a different character. VEYL scored it at 0%.

Hamlet William Shakespeare
0% 1603

Hamlet

A play, not a novel — dialogue in iambic pentameter with speaker attributions. VEYL still scored it at 0%.

Animal Farm George Orwell
10% 1945

Animal Farm

Orwell's deliberately plain "windowpane" prose. Lower than we'd predicted — the specificity wins.

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
6% 1953

Fahrenheit 451

Bradbury's lyrical, metaphor-heavy prose scored 6% — clearly human, as expected.

The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
8% 1963

The Bell Jar

Plath's first-person voice, specific sensory anchors, sharp interior monologue. Scored 8%.

The Shining Stephen King
0% 1977

The Shining

King's colloquial, character-voice-driven prose. Zero percent AI — the strongest possible human verdict.

Some books are marked with placeholder scores until scanned in VEYL. See gen_pages.py to update as you scan.