How long does it take to read The Old Wives' Tale?
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett takes about 10 hours 47 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 47 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1900. 588 pages, about 161,700 words.
22 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 58 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 47 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 44 minutes |
The page count is the median across 171 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters—shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia—over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
Subjects: Social life and customs, Older women, Fiction, Sisters, Women, Long Now Manual for Civilization
