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How long does it take to read A Woman of Substance?

Barbara Taylor Bradford

A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford takes about 15 hours to read at 250 words a minute.

About 15 hours

A long haul

First published 1979. 818 pages, about 224,950 words.

30 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 25 hours
Average, 250 words a minute 15 hours
Fast, 400 words a minute 9 hours 22 minutes

The page count is the median across 35 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest most powerful women in the world. Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool. In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate. Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to seek anonymity in a grimy manufacturing town. Here the cogs of machinery would become wheels of fortune for the enterprising young woman. Her business began as a small fixed shop of homemade treats and expanded into a major department store. At the age of twenty-five she was a successful businesswoman, and by fifty she was an international corporate power. Emma's ambition, sacrifice, and fearless optimism had built a financial empire deficient in only one commodity - personal happiness. Between ill-fated romances and discordant marriages she fought death, war, even her own children, plus the haunting memory of her first love. Only two men - one a friend, one a lover - would tear Emma's mind away from the all-absorbing business with which she tried to fill her empty heart. One would be a source of strength throughout her days, the other would produce the most devastating crisis of her long life. A long and satisfying novel of money, power, and passion with contrasting glimpses of the start realities of poverty alongside the grandeur and opulence of the English gentry.

Subjects: Fiction, Businesswomen, Family, Romance, Novela estadounidense, Mujeres de negocios

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