Home / Books / A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by the numbers

Charles Dickens · first published 1859 · dataset 2026-07-21

Length and reading time

At 448 pages, A Tale of Two Cities is longer than 96.1% of the 1,664 books on the reading lists we track. It is longer than the median book listed for grades 9-12 (274 pages).

Word counts and reading times are estimates: pages × 275 words, divided by the reading speed. Your edition's page count and your own pace will differ.

Where A Tale of Two Cities is on school reading lists

2 appearances (0.0% of all 13,258 listings in the dataset), drawn from 2 published lists, in grades 10th–11th. 2 of the 2 carry a link to the published source document.

Sources

• AP Lit representative text list · checked 2026-05-29
• CCSS ELA Appendix B, grades 9-10 exemplar · checked 2026-05-29

Questions

How many pages is A Tale of Two Cities?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is 448 pages in the edition recorded in our dataset. Page counts vary by edition and format; at about 275 words per page that is roughly 123,000 words.

How long does it take to read A Tale of Two Cities?

About 8 h 13 min at an average adult pace of 250 words per minute (6 h 51 min at 300 wpm, 10 h 16 min at 200 wpm). At 20 minutes a day that is about 25 days.

Is A Tale of Two Cities on school reading lists?

Yes. It appears 2 times on the U.S. school reading lists, award lists and curricula in our dataset, in no single state (national curricula only) plus 2 national-curriculum listings, most often in grades 9-12. That ranks it #1,603 of 1,664 listed books.

Related

• A Tale of Two Cities: reading level, grades and similar booksOn ReadingList, our sister site for school reading lists.
• Books of about the same lengthLittle Women (449 pp.) · Pride and Prejudice (432 pp.) · The Grapes of Wrath (464 pp.) · The Unwanteds (416 pp.)
• The most assigned books, rankedAll 1,664 listed books start here.
• Book length statisticsHow long assigned books are, by grade.

Cite this page