How long does it take to read The Prairie?
A Tale
The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper takes about 8 hours 18 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 5 of Leatherstocking Tales
Previous: The Pioneers
About 8 hours 18 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1800. 453 pages, about 124,575 words. Written for children.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 51 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 18 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 11 minutes |
The page count is the median across 399 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Deep in the heart of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, five hundred miles beyond the Mississippi River, a group of travelers in the year 1805 pushes yet farther westward over the prairie. Called "squatters" and equipped with covered wagons, livestock, farming implements, and household furnishings, they give every appearance of being ordinary settlers except for the fact they have bypassed the fertile river bottoms for the less productive Great Plains. This group is comprised of the rough, semiliterate Ishmael and Esther Bush, now in their fifties; their numerous children, including seven grown sons; Esther's brother, Abiram White; Ellen Wade, a niece, whose bearing bespeaks a more refined background; and Dr. Obed Bat, an eccentric naturalist. In search of a camping place for the night, they are suddenly confronted by a colossal figure who momentarily fills them with superstitious awe. It is Natty Bumppo, whose form, greatly magnified by an optical illusion, is outlined against the setting sun on the horizon. Once a hunter and scout but now reduced in his old age to trapping, Natty is almost as startled as the newcomers by the encounter. It has been months since the octogenarIan has seen white people so far beyond the settlements. He leads the Bush party to a campsite which will provide for their basic needs: water, fuel, and fodder for the animals.
Subjects: Popular Print Disabled Books, Indians of North America, Natty Bumppo (Fictitious character), Fiction, History, Frontier and pioneer life
