How long does it take to read The Golden Bough?
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer takes about 13 hours 32 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 13 hours 32 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1890. 738 pages, about 202,950 words.
28 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 22 hours 33 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 13 hours 32 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 8 hours 27 minutes |
The page count is the median across 374 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The Golden Bough, first issued in 1890 and later expanded to many volumes, is a broad comparison of myth and faith across cultures by the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer. He examines fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god and the scapegoat, seeking what religious belief and scientific thinking share. His central claim is that the earliest religions centred on a sacred king who was sacrificed in step with the seasons, a pattern he builds from the priest of Diana at Lake Nemi. He also proposes that human understanding advances from magic to religion to science.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Mythology, Magic, Superstition, Religion, Primitive Religion, Magie
