W. Somerset Maugham · 1874
5–8 unknown words per 100 at CET-4 level. Looking each one up will stall you; this one wants glosses that appear in place.
Coverage = the share of words in the text you already know. The research gives two lines: 98% before independent fluent reading is realistic, 95% for the instructional level that needs support (Hu & Nation, 2000). Proper nouns are not counted as unknown — recognising that it is a name is enough; this book has 1,112 of them.
CET-6 and up, or read it with glosses. 259,603 words in total; at 150 words a minute for a non-native reader, about 28 h 51 min to finish. Average sentence length 15 words. Reaching 95% coverage on this book (the floor for readability) takes roughly 15,250 word families.
The opening of Of Human Bondage, word for word. Tap any word you don't know and its meaning here appears beside it — no sign-up, tap as often as you like.
The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child’s bed.
“Wake up, Philip,” she said.
She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and carried him downstairs. He was only half awake.
“Your mother wants you,” she said.
She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the child over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his mother. She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He did not ask why he had been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt the warm body through his white flannel nightgown. She pressed him closer to herself.
👆 Tap any word to try it
The numbers above are computed, but we haven't cut Of Human Bondage into passages yet.
If you have the ebook, upload it — ready in a few minutes, same three-minute passages, same tap-a-word glosses. Free, no card needed.
These are already built, and closest in difficulty to Of Human Bondage.
Ordered by unknown words per 100. Lower reads easier; to step up a level, pick a higher number.
Computed by Readii from the public-domain text (updated 2026-10-21), not estimated by hand. The Readii reading level is our own scale, anchored on unknown-word density; it is not the same system as Lexile or AR and does not convert directly. Unknown words are measured against the CET-4 ∪ Gaokao lists, so this is difficulty for a Chinese-speaking learner, not a native-child reading level.