# North and South

North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell has 182,124 words.

## At a glance

Novel by Elizabeth Gaskell.

- **Author:** [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell](https://musael.com/books/authors/elizabeth-cleghorn-gaskell.md) (1810–1865)
- **First published:** 1855
- **Original language:** English
- **Genre:** literary fiction
- **Readers:** adult

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 182,124
- **Reading time:** 12 h 8 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 19 h 35 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 15 h 11 min | 31 days |
| 250 wpm | 12 h 8 min | 25 days |
| 300 wpm | 10 h 7 min | 21 days |

## Read or listen

North and South is in the public domain: these editions are free to download, read and share.

- Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/elizabeth-gaskell/north-and-south
- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276
- LibriVox audiobook (18 h 39 min): https://librivox.org/north-and-south-by-elizabeth-gaskell/

## Counted from the text

Automated estimates from the selected Project Gutenberg text; it may include a preface or notes.

- Words in the text: 182,343
- Chapters: 52
- Dialogue: 47% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 15.1 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/elizabeth-gaskell/north-and-south (word count)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1853142
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_and_South_%28Gaskell_novel%29
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1103203W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276

Checked on 2026-10-27. Page counts change from edition to edition.

Source: https://musael.com/books/north-and-south