READING TIME · STEPHEN CRANE · 1895

How long does it take to read The Red Badge of Courage?

At an average reading speed, about 3 hours. The Red Badge of Courage is 46,179 words long, in 24 chapters.

WORDS: 46,179
CHAPTERS: 24
READING LEVEL: About grade 5 (Flesch–Kincaid)

Reading time at different speeds

Total reading time for The Red Badge of Courage at three reading speeds
Reader	Speed	Whole book
Unhurried	200 words a minute	3 h 50 min
Average adult reader	260 words a minute	3 h
Quick reader	320 words a minute	2 h 25 min

To finish it at a steady pace:

20 minutes a day: about 9 days
30 minutes a day: about 6 days
60 minutes a day: about 3 days

How many chapters are in The Red Badge of Courage?

The Red Badge of Courage has 24 chapters. The longest is Chapter 1 (3,708 words, 14 min); the shortest is Chapter 15 (1,098 words, 4 min). The average chapter takes 7 min.

Reading times below are at 260 words a minute.

Words and reading time for each chapter of The Red Badge of Courage
Chapter	Words	Reading time	Practice in Parlor
Chapter 1	3,708	14 min	Check it →
Chapter 2	2,785	11 min	Check it →
Chapter 3	3,022	12 min	Check it →
Chapter 4	1,177	5 min	Check it →
Chapter 5	2,258	9 min	Check it →
Chapter 6	2,250	9 min	Check it →
Chapter 7	1,300	5 min	Check it →
Chapter 8	1,821	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 9	1,731	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 10	1,359	5 min	Check it →
Chapter 11	2,197	8 min	Check it →
Chapter 12	2,251	9 min	Check it →
Chapter 13	1,944	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 14	1,644	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 15	1,098	4 min	Check it →
Chapter 16	1,861	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 17	1,623	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 18	1,503	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 19	1,949	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 20	1,910	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 21	1,929	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 22	1,641	6 min	Check it →
Chapter 23	1,743	7 min	Check it →
Chapter 24	1,475	6 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 The Red Badge of Courage 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 The Red Badge of Courage in Parlor →How Parlor practices reading comprehension

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 The Red Badge of Courage, Project Gutenberg eBook #73, 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 (12.8 words) and word length. It measures how long the sentences and words are, not how hard the ideas are.

Similar length

All reading times →