# The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane has 46,173 words.

## At a glance

Novel by Stephen Crane.

- **Author:** [Stephen Crane](https://musael.com/books/authors/stephen-crane.md) (1871–1900)
- **First published:** 1894
- **Original language:** English
- **Genre:** historical fiction
- **Readers:** adult

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 46,173
- **Reading time:** 3 h 5 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 4 h 58 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 3 h 51 min | 8 days |
| 250 wpm | 3 h 5 min | 7 days |
| 300 wpm | 2 h 34 min | 6 days |

## Read or listen

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

- Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/stephen-crane/the-red-badge-of-courage
- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73

## Counted from the text

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

- Words in the text: 46,263
- Chapters: 24
- Dialogue: 15% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 12.6 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/stephen-crane/the-red-badge-of-courage (word count)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1219239
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Badge_of_Courage
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20844W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73

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

Source: https://musael.com/books/the-red-badge-of-courage