READING TIME · FREDERICK DOUGLASS · 1845

How long does it take to read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass?

At an average reading speed, about 2 hours 20 minutes. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is 36,340 words long, in 11 chapters and an appendix.

WORDS: 36,340
CHAPTERS: 11
READING LEVEL: About grade 8 (Flesch–Kincaid)

Reading time at different speeds

Total reading time for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at three reading speeds
Reader	Speed	Whole book
Unhurried	200 words a minute	3 h
Average adult reader	260 words a minute	2 h 20 min
Quick reader	320 words a minute	1 h 55 min

To finish it at a steady pace:

20 minutes a day: about 7 days
30 minutes a day: about 5 days
60 minutes a day: about 3 days

How many chapters are in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass?

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass has 11 chapters. The longest is Chapter 10 (12,812 words, 49 min); the shortest is Chapter 6 (1,282 words, 5 min). The average chapter takes 13 min. In Parlor the appendix is at the end of chapter 11, so its words are counted there.

Reading times below are at 260 words a minute.

Words and reading time for each chapter of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Chapter	Words	Reading time	Practice in Parlor
Chapter 1	2,049	8 min	Check it →
Chapter 2	2,013	8 min	Check it →
Chapter 3	1,455	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 4	1,575	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 5	1,657	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 6	1,282	5 min	Check it →
Chapter 7	2,464	9 min	Check it →
Chapter 8	1,804	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 9	2,035	8 min	Check it →
Chapter 10	12,812	49 min	Check it →
Chapter 11	7,194	28 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 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass one chapter at a time, then make sure you understood it.

Read a chapter. 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 chapter hinges on, then checks your answer against the text.
Talk it through, then come back. Discuss stays within the chapters you have reached, so it won’t give away what comes next, and Revisit brings your ideas back later.

Open Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in Parlor →How Parlor practices reading comprehension

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How these numbers were worked out

Words are counted in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Project Gutenberg eBook #23, the edition Parlor opens, divided into chapters 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 (18.1 words) and word length. It measures how long the sentences and words are, not how hard the ideas are.

Similar length

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