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The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 1891 · 78,728 words
3:48:13
at 390 wpm · the whole book
The audiobook runs about eight hours.

Basil Hallward paints Dorian Gray's portrait and begs his friend Lord Henry Wotton not to influence the boy. Lord Henry does nothing else for the rest of the novel. Dorian wishes the picture would take his age for him, and it does; over the next eighteen years he wrecks reputations, and almost all of it reaches you as drawing-room rumour rather than as scenes. The canvas keeps the account upstairs, in the old schoolroom that the grandfather who hated him had built for him — and that is also the one room where the book stops reporting and shows you. One chapter is a catalogue of jewels, embroideries and musical instruments with no scene in it at all.

20 chapters · begin at the beginning
Chapter I14:12begin ▸
·Chapter II16:28sealed
·Chapter III13:00sealed
·Chapter IV16:10sealed
·Chapter V12:58sealed
·Chapter VI8:17sealed
·Chapter VII12:54sealed
·Chapter VIII15:18sealed
·Chapter IX11:23sealed
·Chapter X9:14sealed
·Chapter XI20:28sealed
·Chapter XII7:59sealed
·Chapter XIII7:17sealed
·Chapter XIV13:05sealed
·Chapter XV9:14sealed
·Chapter XVI9:01sealed
·Chapter XVII5:31sealed
·Chapter XVIII9:45sealed
·Chapter XIX10:27sealed
·Chapter XX5:32sealed

How long does it take to read The Picture of Dorian Gray?

The Picture of Dorian Gray is 78,728 words. At an average adult reading pace of 300 words a minute that is about 4 hr 22 min, or roughly 3 hr 17 min if you read quickly and 6 hr 34 min at a more deliberate 200 words a minute.

That count is measured from the complete public-domain text rather than estimated from a page count, so you can compare all the books side by side.

Text: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1891), public domain, via Project Gutenberg. · You read at the book's authored pace; nothing here is stored anywhere but this browser. · About Midsentence