# Of Human Bondage

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham has 259,605 words.

## At a glance

1915 novel and bildungsroman by William Somerset Maugham.

- **Author:** [W. Somerset Maugham](https://musael.com/books/authors/w-somerset-maugham.md) (1874–1965)
- **First published:** 1915
- **Original language:** British English
- **Genre:** literary fiction
- **Readers:** adult

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 259,605
- **Reading time:** 17 h 18 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 27 h 55 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 21 h 38 min | 44 days |
| 250 wpm | 17 h 18 min | 35 days |
| 300 wpm | 14 h 25 min | 29 days |

## Read or listen

Of Human Bondage is in the public domain: these editions are free to download, read and share.

- Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-somerset-maugham/of-human-bondage
- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/351
- LibriVox audiobook (25 h 46 min): https://librivox.org/of-human-bondage-by-somerset-maugham/

## Counted from the text

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

- Words in the text: 259,612
- Dialogue: 21% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 15 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/w-somerset-maugham/of-human-bondage (word count)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/351 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1195793
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Human_Bondage
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL505781W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/351

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

Source: https://musael.com/books/of-human-bondage