How long does it take to read Life of Samuel Johnson?
Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell takes about 11 hours 20 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 20 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1776. 618 pages, about 169,950 words.
23 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 18 hours 53 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 20 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 238 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Poet, lexicographer, critic, moralist and Great Cham, Dr. Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious Journals he wrote daily furnished him with first-rate material when he came to write his biography. The result is a masterpiece that brims over with wit, anecdote and originality. Hailed by Macaulay as the best biography ever written and by Carlyle as a book 'beyond any other product of the eighteenth century', The Life of Samuel Johnson today continues to enjoy its status as a classic of the language.
Subjects: Biography, Description and travel, English Authors, Interviews, Lexicographers, KDescr. & trav
