How long does it take to read Wideacre?
Wideacre by Philippa Gregory takes about 10 hours 50 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Part of The Wideacre trilogy
Next: The Favoured Child
About 10 hours 50 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1987. 591 pages, about 162,525 words.
22 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 18 hours 4 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 50 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 46 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Editorial Reviews Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly Gregory's full-blown first novel is a marvelously assured period piece, an English gothic with narrative verve. Beatrice Lacey loves nothing more than the family estate, Wideacrenot her bluff, hearty father, her weak brother, Harry, or her mother, who can't quite believe mounting evidence that damns her passionate daughter. Foiled in her hunger to own the estate by the 18th century laws of entail, Beatrice plots her father's death, knowing she can twist Harry in any direction she chooses, for her brother harbors a dark, perverted secret. Their incestuous tangle is not broken even by Harry's marriage. And while a bounteous harvest multiplies, no one gainsays the young squire and his sister, the true master of Wideacre. Beatrice marries also, managing to hide the paternity of two children sired by Harry until her increasing greed squeezes the land and its people dry, and the seeds of destruction she has sown come to their awful fruition. Gregory effortlessly breathes color and life into a tale of obsession built around a ruthless, fascinating woman. Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild alternate; major ad/promo.
Subjects: Country homes, Administration of estates, Gothic, Inheritance and succession, Fiction, Women
