How long does it take to read In a Glass Darkly?
In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu takes about 6 hours 5 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 5 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1872. 332 pages, about 91,300 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 5 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 41 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In a Glass Darkly collects together five short stories from gothic horror and mystery writer Sheridan Le Fanu. The book, published in 1872 a year before Le Fanu's death, is named from a passage in Corinthians which speaks of humankind perceiving the world "through a glass darkly." The stories are told from the posthumous writings of an occult detective named Dr Martin Hesselius. In Green Tea a clergyman is being driven mad by an evil demon that takes the ephemeral form of a monkey, but is unseen by others as it burdens the victim's mind with psychological torment. In The Familiar, revised from Le Fanu's The Watcher of 1851, a sea captain is stalked by a dwarf, "The Watcher." Is this strange character from captain's past? In Mr Justice Harbottle a merciless court judge is attacked by vengeful spirits, dreaming he is sentenced to death by a horrific version of himself. The story was revised from 1853's An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street. In The Room in the Dragon Volant, a notable mystery which includes a premature burial theme, an innocent young Englishman in France tries to rescue a mysterious countess from her unbearable situation. Lastly, Carmilla tells the tale of a lesbian vampire. It was a huge influence on Bram Stoker's writing of Dracula and the basis for the films Vampyr in 1932 and The Vampire Lovers in 1970.
Subjects: English Fantasy fiction, English Ghost stories, English Occult fiction, Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
