How many words are in Anna Karenina?
by Leo Tolstoy · 1877 · Literary Fiction
349,775
Word count
24 hr 30 min
Reading time
1,400
Est. pages
1877
Published
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is approximately 349,775 wordslong. At an average reading speed of 238 words per minute, that's about 24 hr 30 min of reading spread across several sittings. First published in 1877, it sits in the Literary Fiction category.
Typical literary fiction novels run 70,000–100,000 words, with a sweet spot around 80,000–90,000. At 349,775 words, Anna Karenina runs longer than the typical range, in epic territory.
Source: Word count computed from the Project Gutenberg plain-text edition (eBook #1399); reflects this public-domain English translation · referenceVerified 2026-06-21
Literary Fiction novels of similar length
| Title | Author | Word count |
|---|---|---|
| Bleak House | Charles Dickens | 353,463 |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | 354,826 |
| Middlemarch | George Eliot | 316,389 |
| Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | 302,384 |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | 427,246 |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | 460,976 |