READING TIME · CHARLES DICKENS · 1843
How long does it take to read A Christmas Carol?
At an average reading speed, about 1 hour 50 minutes. A Christmas Carol is 28,421 words long, in five staves (Dickens's word for chapters, as in the verses of a carol).
- WORDS
- 28,421
- STAVES
- 5
- READING LEVEL
- About grade 6 (Flesch–Kincaid)
Reading time at different speeds
| Reader | Speed | Whole book |
|---|---|---|
| Unhurried | 200 words a minute | 2 h 20 min |
| Average adult reader | 260 words a minute | 1 h 50 min |
| Quick reader | 320 words a minute | 1 h 30 min |
To finish it at a steady pace:
- 20 minutes a day: about 6 days
- 30 minutes a day: about 4 days
- 60 minutes a day: about 2 days
How many chapters are in A Christmas Carol?
A Christmas Carol has five chapters, which Dickens called staves. The longest is Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits (8,201 words, 32 min); the shortest is Stave 5: The End of It (2,295 words, 9 min). The average stave takes 22 min.
Reading times below are at 260 words a minute.
| Stave | Words | Reading time | Practice in Parlor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stave 1: Marley's Ghost | 6,417 | 25 min | Check it → |
| Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits | 6,151 | 24 min | Check it → |
| Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits | 8,201 | 32 min | Check it → |
| Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits | 5,357 | 21 min | Check it → |
| Stave 5: The End of It | 2,295 | 9 min | Check it → |
READING IT FOR CLASS?
Knowing how long it takes is one thing. Understanding it is another.
Parlor Study is a reading comprehension companion. Read A Christmas Carol one stave at a time, then make sure you understood it.
- Read a stave. The full Project Gutenberg text, with highlights, notes and read-aloud.
- Explain it in your own words. Challenge me asks about the main idea, what the text suggests without saying, and the turn the stave hinges on, then checks your answer against the text.
- Talk it through, then come back. Discuss stays within the staves you have reached, so it won’t give away what comes next, and Revisit brings your ideas back later.
Parlor Study is a web preview for ages 13 and up, available by invitation. Request an invitation. AI feedback can make mistakes; check it against the text.
How these numbers were worked out
Words are counted in A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, Project Gutenberg eBook #46, the edition Parlor opens, divided into staves exactly as Parlor shows them. Project Gutenberg’s licence and notes are left out. Other editions may differ slightly.
Reading speeds follow Marc Brysbaert’s review of 190 studies, which found that adults read English silently at about 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction (Journal of Memory and Language, 2019). Older and more difficult books often take longer than their word count suggests.
The reading level is the Flesch–Kincaid grade, worked out from average sentence length (14.6 words) and word length. It measures how long the sentences and words are, not how hard the ideas are.
Similar length
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1 h 40 min
- The Call of the Wild 2 h
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 2 h 20 min
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 2 h 30 min
Also by Charles Dickens
- Great Expectations 11 h 55 min
- A Tale of Two Cities 8 h 40 min
- Oliver Twist 10 h 5 min