How long does it take to read Once Upon a Time?
Once Upon a Time by Marina Warner takes about 3 hours 41 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 41 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2014. 201 pages, about 55,275 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 41 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 18 minutes |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over her long writing career, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich collection of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. She makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.
Subjects: Fairy tales, History and criticism, Fairy tales, history and criticism, Adaptations