How long does it take to read The Great Hunger?
Ireland 1845-1849
Cecil Woodham Smith, Cecil W. Smith, Cecil Blanche Fitz Gerald Woodham Smith
The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham Smith, Cecil W. Smith, Cecil Blanche Fitz Gerald Woodham Smith takes about 9 hours 21 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 21 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1962. 510 pages, about 140,250 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 35 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 21 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 51 minutes |
The page count is the median across 33 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The Great Hunger is the story of one of the worst disasters in world history: the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Within five years, one million people died of starvation; emigrants by the hundreds of thousands sailed for America and Canada. Most emigrant ships were small, ill-equipped, dangerously unsanitary, and often unseaworthy. Some ships never arrived; those that did carried passengers already infected with and often dying of typhus. The Irish who managed to reach the United States alive had little or no money and were often too weak to work. They crowded into dark, dirty cellars; begged in the streets; and took whatever employment they could get at wages which no American would accept. Epidemics, riots and chaos followed in their wake, so that Irish immigrants came to be regarded as a danger to the health of the community and a burden on society. The Great Hunger is a heartbreaking story of suffering, insensitivity, and blundering stupidity; yet it is also an epic tale of courage, dignity anddespite all oddsa hardly supportable optimism.
Subjects: History, Famines, Emigration and immigration, Nutrition, Food Deprivation, Economic conditions
