READING TIME · VIRGINIA WOOLF · 1925
How long does it take to read Mrs. Dalloway?
At an average reading speed, about 4 hours 5 minutes. Mrs. Dalloway is 63,597 words long, in one continuous text, without chapters.
- WORDS
- 63,597
- CHAPTERS
- None
- READING LEVEL
- About grade 7 (Flesch–Kincaid)
Reading time at different speeds
| Reader | Speed | Whole book |
|---|---|---|
| Unhurried | 200 words a minute | 5 h 20 min |
| Average adult reader | 260 words a minute | 4 h 5 min |
| Quick reader | 320 words a minute | 3 h 20 min |
To finish it at a steady pace:
- 20 minutes a day: about 13 days
- 30 minutes a day: about 9 days
- 60 minutes a day: about 5 days
Is Mrs. Dalloway divided into chapters?
No. Mrs. Dalloway takes place over a single day in June and has no numbered chapters, only breaks between scenes, so Parlor opens it as a single part. At 260 words a minute it takes 4 h 5 min in all; at 30 minutes a day, about 9 days. Check your understanding of it in Parlor →
READING IT FOR CLASS?
Knowing how long it takes is one thing. Understanding it is another.
Parlor Study is a reading comprehension companion. Read Mrs. Dalloway at your own pace, then make sure you understood it.
- Read a stretch of it. 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 story hinges on, then checks your answer against the text.
- Talk it through, then come back. Discuss helps you talk through what you have read, and Revisit brings your ideas back later.
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How these numbers were worked out
Words are counted in Mrs. Dalloway, Project Gutenberg eBook #71865, the edition Parlor opens, as one continuous text, as Parlor shows it. 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 (16.6 words) and word length. It measures how long the sentences and words are, not how hard the ideas are.
Similar length
- Washington Square 4 h 5 min
- Around the World in Eighty Days 4 h
- A Little Princess 4 h 15 min
- A Room with a View 4 h 20 min