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How long does it take to read Savage Beauty?

Nancy Milford

Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford takes about 10 hours 5 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 10 hours 5 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2001. 550 pages, about 151,250 words.

21 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 16 hours 48 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 10 hours 5 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 6 hours 18 minutes

The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Thirty years after the smashing success of Zelda, Nancy Milford returns with a stunning second act. Savage Beauty is the portrait of a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed American ever as she tormented herself.If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. The first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction and her impact on crowds, and on men, was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well. Milford calls her book "a family romance"--for the love between the three Millay sisters and their mother was so deep as to be dangerous. As a family, they were like real-life Little Women, with a touch of Mommie Dearest.Nancy Milford was given exclusive access to Millay's papers, and what she found was an extraordinary treasure. Boxes and boxes of letter flew back and forth among the three sisters and their mother--and Millay kept the most intimate diary, one whose ruthless honesty brings to mind Sylvia Plath. Written with passion and flair, Savage Beauty is an iconic portrait of a woman's life.

Subjects: American Poets, Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, History, Poets, biography

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