ShelfLook
Tools About
Cover of The Pilgrim's Progress

How long does it take to read The Pilgrim's Progress?

John Bunyan

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan takes about 5 hours 41 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 41 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1678. 310 pages, about 85,250 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 28 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 41 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 33 minutes

The page count is the median across 695 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Bunyan's allegory uses the everyday world of common experience as a metaphor for the spiritual journey of the soul toward God. The hero, Christian, encounters many obstacles in his quest: the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, the Wicket Gate, as well as those who tempt him from his path (e.g., Talkative, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, the Giant Despair). But in the end he reaches Beulah Land, where he awaits the crossing of the river of death and his entry into the heavenly city. "Pilgrim's Progress" was enormously influential not only as a best-selling inspirational tract in the late 17th century, but as an ancestor of the 18th-century English novel, and many of its themes and ideas have entered permanently into Western culture.

Content warnings (AI-checked, may be incomplete)
  • violence
  • abuse

How these are chosen

Subjects: Bibliography, Fiction, Spiritual life, Church of England, Christian biography, Cree (Langue)

More by John Bunyan

Books like this

Popular books of similar length