How long does it take to read Bleak House?
Bleak House by Charles Dickens takes about 15 hours 12 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 15 hours 12 minutes
A long haul
First published 1850. 829 pages, about 227,975 words.
31 days (about 5 weeks) at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 25 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 15 hours 12 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 9 hours 30 minutes |
The page count is the median across 418 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.
Subjects: Fiction, Guardian and ward, Young women, Illegitimate children, Inheritance and succession, Social problems
