Reading order
A Dance to the Music of Time reading order
- A Question of Upbringing1951
- A Buyer's Market1952
- The Acceptance World1955
- At Lady Molly's1957
- Casanova's Chinese Restaurant1960
- The Kindly Ones1962
- The Valley of Bones1964
- Books Do Furnish a Room1971
- 8 volumes
- Volumes
- 1951–1971
- Published
- about 35 h
- Reading time
- Completed
- Status
Quick answer
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Publication order
8 volumes1951–1971Completed
- Anthony Powell’s twelve-novel sequence, published from 1951 to 1975 and named after a painting by Poussin, follows Nicholas Jenkins and the people he keeps running into from his schooldays in the 1920s to old age in the 1970s, through London society, art, politics and the Second World War.
- Its great comic creation is Kenneth Widmerpool, the clumsy, humourless schoolmate who rises relentlessly.
- Slow, wry and rewarding as a whole; only eight volumes are listed here.
- No book has enough ratings yet.
- Read in order, from A Question of Upbringing.
A plan for the whole series
8 volumes, 1,924 pages, about 35 hours. At 45 min a day that is about 7 weeks.
Stages
2 stages, with 1 short book from outside the series between them. You finish around December 19, 2026, 4 days later than in one go.
- Stage 118 habout 3 weeksby November 21, 2026
- Short breakThe Fire Next Time · James Baldwin · 120 pp. · score 8.8
- Stage 218 habout 3 weeksby December 19, 2026
- The end of the series
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How this plan is calculated
The plan comes from the pages and ratings of each volume: we split the series into stages of about three weeks’ reading, size each break to the stage before it, and read the chance of finishing from how many readers rate the last volume compared with the first. How we work out the plan →
Every volume in order
No volume in this series has enough ratings to enter a ranking yet, so the list carries no scores — the order and the volumes are still complete.
Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 28, 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which A Dance to the Music of Time book is the longest?
“A Buyer's Market” is the longest at 274 pages; the shortest is “The Acceptance World” with 219 pages.