The Story of Doctor Dolittle

At a glance

Author

Hugh Lofting & Hugh Walpole

Genre

Adventure

Readers

Middle grade

Length

Shortunder 40,000 words

Readers' rating

3.4 out of 5from 61 ratings on Hardcover

How long it takes to read

About 1 h 41 min at 250 words a minute, or 2 h 42 min as an audiobook.

Compared with other books

The books closest in length, and a few well-known ones for scale.

1. 1War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy587,287Compare
2. 2The Fellowship of the RingJ. R. R. Tolkien177,227Compare
3. 3Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen121,970Compare
4. 4Harry Potter and the Philosopher's StoneJ. K. Rowling76,944Compare
5. 5The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald47,094Compare
6. 6The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeRobert Louis Stevenson25,664Compare
7. 7The House at Pooh CornerA. A. Milne25,361Compare
8. 8The Story of Doctor DolittleHugh Lofting and Hugh Walpole25,140
9. 9The Box-Car ChildrenGertrude Chandler Warner24,613Compare
10. 10The Bad BeginningLemony Snicket24,130Compare

Counted from the text

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

Words in the text

27,063

Dialogue

40%of the words are inside quotation marks

Average sentence

14.9 words

Vocabulary

380 different words in every 1,000Distinct words in the sampled text; this does not measure writing quality.

Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

• standardebooks.orgword count
• gutenberg.orgword count
• openlibrary.orgcover and record
• hardcover.appreaders' rating

The word count is Standard Ebooks’ count of its edition; the figures under “Counted from the text” are Musael’s own count of the Project Gutenberg text.

Checked on 2026-10-27. Page counts change from edition to edition. Cover from Open Library; the edition shown may differ.

Questions