# The Red and the Black

The Red and the Black by Stendhal has 193,611 words.

## At a glance

French novel by Stendhal (1830).

- **Author:** [Stendhal](https://musael.com/books/authors/stendhal.md) (1783–1842)
- **First published:** 1830
- **Original language:** French
- **Genre:** literary fiction
- **Readers:** adult

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 193,611
- **Reading time:** 12 h 54 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 20 h 49 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 16 h 8 min | 33 days |
| 250 wpm | 12 h 54 min | 26 days |
| 300 wpm | 10 h 45 min | 22 days |

## Read or listen

The Red and the Black is in the public domain: these editions are free to download, read and share.

- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44747

## Counted from the text

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

- Words in the text: 193,611
- Chapters: 75
- Dialogue: 36% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 16.3 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44747 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q192649
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_and_the_Black
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL29697463W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44747

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

Source: https://musael.com/books/the-red-and-the-black