How long does it take to read the classics?
We counted the words in the full text of 72 classics. At the average adult reading speed for fiction, 260 words a minute, The Great Gatsby takes about 3 hours 6 minutes, Pride and Prejudice about 7 hours 49 minutes, Moby-Dick about 13 hours 28 minutes and War and Peace, at 564,305 words, about 36 hours 10 minutes.
By Ellis Newton, Co-founder and CTO, ChaptifyPublished
How long it takes to read the most-searched classics
Reading times for the classics people search for most, at the average adult reading speed for fiction, 260 words a minute. Each count is for the public-domain edition named.
- The Odyssey takes about 7 hours 33 minutes to read, or 23 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 117,750 words in Samuel Butler’s translation.
- The Iliad takes about 9 hours 50 minutes to read, or 30 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 153,277 words in Samuel Butler’s translation.
- War and Peace takes about 36 hours 10 minutes to read, or 109 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 564,305 words in Louise and Aylmer Maude’s translation.
- Les Misérables takes about 35 hours 54 minutes to read, or 108 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 560,036 words in Isabel F. Hapgood’s translation.
- The Count of Monte Cristo takes about 29 hours 37 minutes to read, or 89 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 461,995 words.
- Pride and Prejudice takes about 7 hours 49 minutes to read, or 24 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 121,970 words.
- Crime and Punishment takes about 13 hours 2 minutes to read, or 40 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 203,329 words in Constance Garnett’s translation.
- The Brothers Karamazov takes about 22 hours 28 minutes to read, or 68 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 350,426 words in Constance Garnett’s translation.
- Anna Karenina takes about 22 hours 28 minutes to read, or 68 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 350,515 words in Constance Garnett’s translation.
- Jane Eyre takes about 11 hours 56 minutes to read, or 36 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 186,222 words.
- Wuthering Heights takes about 7 hours 28 minutes to read, or 23 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 116,508 words.
- Frankenstein takes about 4 hours 49 minutes to read, or 15 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 75,076 words.
- The Great Gatsby takes about 3 hours 6 minutes to read, or 10 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 48,393 words.
- Moby-Dick takes about 13 hours 28 minutes to read, or 41 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 210,002 words.
- Dracula takes about 10 hours 20 minutes to read, or 31 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 161,083 words.
- Don Quixote takes about 25 hours 43 minutes to read, or 78 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 401,279 words in John Ormsby’s translation.
- Paradise Lost takes about 5 hours 7 minutes to read, or 16 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 79,836 words.
- Ulysses takes about 16 hours 59 minutes to read, or 51 days at 20 minutes a day. It’s 264,912 words.
Reading times for all 72 classics
All 72 books, in shelf order. Reading time assumes 260 words a minute for fiction and verse and 238 for non-fiction, the adult averages from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of reading speed. "Days" is at 20 minutes of reading a day, rounded up.
| Book | Words | Reading time | Days at 20 minutes a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain | 110,812 | 7 h 06 min | 22 |
| The Adventures of Sherlock HolmesArthur Conan Doyle | 104,544 | 6 h 42 min | 21 |
| The Adventures of Tom SawyerMark Twain | 70,589 | 4 h 31 min | 14 |
| The AeneidVirgil, tr. John Dryden · verse | 107,550 | 6 h 54 min | 21 |
| Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll | 26,543 | 1 h 42 min | 6 |
| Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy, tr. Constance Garnett | 350,515 | 22 h 28 min | 68 |
| Anne of Green GablesL. M. Montgomery | 102,856 | 6 h 36 min | 20 |
| Around the World in Eighty DaysJules Verne, tr. George Makepeace Towle | 62,850 | 4 h 02 min | 13 |
| The Art of WarSun Tzu, tr. Lionel Giles · non-fiction | 10,529 | 44 min | 3 |
| BeowulfAnonymous, tr. Francis B. Gummere · verse | 22,984 | 1 h 28 min | 5 |
| Bleak HouseCharles Dickens | 354,362 | 22 h 43 min | 69 |
| The Brothers KaramazovFyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Constance Garnett | 350,426 | 22 h 28 min | 68 |
| The Call of the WildJack London | 31,804 | 2 h 02 min | 7 |
| A Christmas CarolCharles Dickens | 28,505 | 1 h 50 min | 6 |
| The Count of Monte CristoAlexandre Dumas | 461,995 | 29 h 37 min | 89 |
| Crime and PunishmentFyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Constance Garnett | 203,329 | 13 h 02 min | 40 |
| David CopperfieldCharles Dickens | 356,102 | 22 h 50 min | 69 |
| The Divine ComedyDante Alighieri, tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · verse | 111,364 | 7 h 08 min | 22 |
| Don QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes, tr. John Ormsby | 401,279 | 25 h 43 min | 78 |
| DraculaBram Stoker | 161,083 | 10 h 20 min | 31 |
| DublinersJames Joyce | 67,565 | 4 h 20 min | 13 |
| EmmaJane Austen | 160,415 | 10 h 17 min | 31 |
| FrankensteinMary Shelley | 75,076 | 4 h 49 min | 15 |
| Great ExpectationsCharles Dickens | 185,339 | 11 h 53 min | 36 |
| The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald | 48,393 | 3 h 06 min | 10 |
| Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad | 38,504 | 2 h 28 min | 8 |
| The Hound of the BaskervillesArthur Conan Doyle | 59,245 | 3 h 48 min | 12 |
| The Hunchback of Notre-DameVictor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood | 181,335 | 11 h 37 min | 35 |
| The IdiotFyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Eva Martin | 243,780 | 15 h 38 min | 47 |
| The IliadHomer, tr. Samuel Butler (prose) | 153,277 | 9 h 50 min | 30 |
| Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë | 186,222 | 11 h 56 min | 36 |
| The JungleUpton Sinclair | 150,672 | 9 h 40 min | 29 |
| Les MisérablesVictor Hugo, tr. Isabel F. Hapgood | 560,036 | 35 h 54 min | 108 |
| LeviathanThomas Hobbes · non-fiction | 211,900 | 14 h 50 min | 45 |
| Little WomenLouisa May Alcott | 186,025 | 11 h 55 min | 36 |
| Madame BovaryGustave Flaubert, tr. Eleanor Marx-Aveling | 115,730 | 7 h 25 min | 23 |
| Mansfield ParkJane Austen | 159,981 | 10 h 15 min | 31 |
| MeditationsMarcus Aurelius, tr. Meric Casaubon (1634) · non-fiction | 57,312 | 4 h 01 min | 13 |
| The MetamorphosisFranz Kafka, tr. David Wyllie | 22,011 | 1 h 25 min | 5 |
| MiddlemarchGeorge Eliot | 318,251 | 20 h 24 min | 62 |
| Moby-DickHerman Melville | 210,002 | 13 h 28 min | 41 |
| Narrative of the Life of Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass · non-fiction | 36,348 | 2 h 33 min | 8 |
| North and SouthElizabeth Gaskell | 182,293 | 11 h 41 min | 36 |
| Notes from UndergroundFyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Constance Garnett | 43,996 | 2 h 49 min | 9 |
| The OdysseyHomer, tr. Samuel Butler (prose) | 117,750 | 7 h 33 min | 23 |
| Oliver TwistCharles Dickens | 157,793 | 10 h 07 min | 31 |
| On the Origin of SpeciesCharles Darwin · non-fiction | 150,152 | 10 h 31 min | 32 |
| Paradise LostJohn Milton · verse | 79,836 | 5 h 07 min | 16 |
| PersuasionJane Austen | 83,345 | 5 h 21 min | 17 |
| Peter PanJ. M. Barrie | 47,177 | 3 h 01 min | 10 |
| The Picture of Dorian GrayOscar Wilde | 78,745 | 5 h 03 min | 16 |
| Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen | 121,970 | 7 h 49 min | 24 |
| The PrinceNiccolò Machiavelli, tr. W. K. Marriott · non-fiction | 32,270 | 2 h 16 min | 7 |
| The RepublicPlato, tr. Benjamin Jowett · non-fiction | 118,736 | 8 h 19 min | 25 |
| The Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne | 83,641 | 5 h 22 min | 17 |
| The Secret GardenFrances Hodgson Burnett | 80,932 | 5 h 11 min | 16 |
| Sense and SensibilityJane Austen | 119,571 | 7 h 40 min | 23 |
| The Sun Also RisesErnest Hemingway | 67,701 | 4 h 20 min | 14 |
| A Tale of Two CitiesCharles Dickens | 136,282 | 8 h 44 min | 27 |
| Tess of the d'UrbervillesThomas Hardy | 149,645 | 9 h 36 min | 29 |
| The Three MusketeersAlexandre Dumas | 228,887 | 14 h 40 min | 45 |
| The Time MachineH. G. Wells | 32,508 | 2 h 05 min | 7 |
| Treasure IslandRobert Louis Stevenson | 68,253 | 4 h 23 min | 14 |
| Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the SeaJules Verne | 104,487 | 6 h 42 min | 21 |
| UlyssesJames Joyce | 264,912 | 16 h 59 min | 51 |
| Vanity FairWilliam Makepeace Thackeray | 304,416 | 19 h 31 min | 59 |
| WaldenHenry David Thoreau · non-fiction | 106,726 | 7 h 28 min | 23 |
| War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy, tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude | 564,305 | 36 h 10 min | 109 |
| The War of the WorldsH. G. Wells | 60,123 | 3 h 51 min | 12 |
| The Wealth of NationsAdam Smith · non-fiction | 379,141 | 26 h 33 min | 80 |
| The Wonderful Wizard of OzL. Frank Baum | 39,302 | 2 h 31 min | 8 |
| Wuthering HeightsEmily Brontë | 116,508 | 7 h 28 min | 23 |
Download the data (CSV). It has every column in the table, plus the Project Gutenberg eBook number of each edition and a note on what was included. It's free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit "Chaptify (chaptify.net)".
What is the longest classic?
In this set, War and Peace is the longest at 564,305 words in Louise and Aylmer Maude's translation, just ahead of Les Misérables at 560,036 in Isabel Hapgood's. The two are less than 1% apart, so a different translation of either could reverse the order.
The shortest is The Art of War, at 10,529 words in Lionel Giles's translation without his commentary, which takes about 44 minutes at the average speed for non-fiction. Of the fiction, The Metamorphosis is the shortest, at 22,011 words.
How long will a classic take you to read?
Divide the book's word count by your reading speed in words per minute, then by 60 for hours. At the slow end of the normal adult range for fiction, 200 words a minute, War and Peace takes about 47 hours 2 minutes. At the fast end, 320 words a minute, it takes about 29 hours 23 minutes.
If you don't know your speed, what is the average reading speed? shows how to measure it in ten minutes. The reading time calculator does the arithmetic for any page count.
Reading 20 minutes a day, a long classic is a season rather than a year. Pride and Prejudice takes 24 days, Middlemarch 62, and War and Peace 109. The research on building a reading habit suggests a daily habit takes about two months to become automatic, which is roughly the time a 20-minute habit needs to get through Anna Karenina.
Why are there different word counts for the same book?
Word counts for the same classic vary for three reasons. Translations differ: two translators rarely use the same number of words for the same sentence. Editions differ: some include prefaces, notes, appendices or a second part, and some are abridged. Counting rules differ: whether "good-humoured" is one word or two, and whether chapter headings count.
That's why each count here names the edition it came from and what was left out. Every edition is on Project Gutenberg, so any number can be checked against the exact file.
Many readers today read The Odyssey, The Iliad, the Russian novels and Don Quixote in modern translations, such as Emily Wilson's Odyssey (2017). Modern translations are still under copyright, so we can't count them from the text. Treat the figures for translated books as a close guide rather than an exact match for your copy.
How we counted the words in each classic
We took the plain-text edition of each book from Project Gutenberg and counted its main text, from the first line to the last.
Left out: Project Gutenberg's header and licence, title pages, contents, dedications, prefaces and introductions (unless they're part of the story, like the Prelude to Middlemarch), footnotes, endnotes, indexes, glossaries, illustration captions and transcriber's notes.
Counted as a word: any run of characters between spaces that contains a letter or a number. Dashes separate words and hyphens don't, so "good-humoured" is one word, as most readers would count it. Chapter headings inside the text are counted.
Where a book needed a judgement call, such as whether the Custom-House sketch belongs to The Scarlet Letter, the note column in the CSV says what we did. Reading time is the word count divided by the average speed for its kind of book. Brysbaert's meta-analysis has no separate figure for verse, so Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf and The Aeneid are timed at the fiction rate, and you may find verse slower.
The counts were run on 23 September 2026. Titles published after 1930 generally aren't in the US public domain yet, so they can't be counted from the full text.
Sources
- Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Project Gutenberg. Checked 23 September 2026.
- Marc Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language 109 (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Checked 22 September 2026.
Published by Chaptify LLC, the maker of Chaptify, a reading tracker and social reading app for iPhone.