# The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has 83,919 words.

## At a glance

Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

- **Author:** [Nathaniel Hawthorne](https://musael.com/books/authors/nathaniel-hawthorne.md) (1804–1864)
- **First published:** 1850
- **Original language:** English
- **Genre:** historical fiction
- **Readers:** adult

## How long it takes to read

- **Words:** 83,919
- **Reading time:** 5 h 36 min (at 250 words a minute)
- **Listening time:** 9 h 1 min (audiobook pace, 155 words a minute)

| Reading speed | Whole book | At 30 minutes a day |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 200 wpm | 7 h | 14 days |
| 250 wpm | 5 h 36 min | 12 days |
| 300 wpm | 4 h 40 min | 10 days |

## Read or listen

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

- Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nathaniel-hawthorne/the-scarlet-letter
- Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25344

## Counted from the text

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

- Words in the text: 84,629
- Dialogue: 19% of the words are inside quotation marks
- Average sentence: 22.7 words

## Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

- https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/nathaniel-hawthorne/the-scarlet-letter (word count)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25344 (word count)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q907568
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter
- https://openlibrary.org/works/OL455305W
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25344

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

Source: https://musael.com/books/the-scarlet-letter