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Ch. 1: The Artist's Studio Segment 1 of 9
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Wilde's only novel is structured around epigrams — brilliant, compressed sentences that say the unexpected thing in precisely the fewest words. For typists, this means constant shifts between long decorative clauses and short, punchy payoffs. You'll type twenty words of elaborate subordination, then a six-word hammer of a conclusion. That rhythm is unlike any other book in the library. Wilde's aesthetic vocabulary — "chrysanthemums", "vermilion", "Renaissance", "languorous" — places demands on your fingers that no word-list trainer includes. The dialogue is relentless and witty: quotation marks appear far more densely here than in standard narrative fiction, building a natural punctuation habit quickly. The three passages here run about 670 words, roughly 17 minutes at 40 WPM. Progress saves after every passage; return any time and it opens exactly where you stopped.
Also try: Sherlock Holmes · Dracula · All 20 books
This practice set contains 3 passages from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, split into 9 typing segments — about 667 words, roughly 17 minutes of typing at 40 WPM. Your position saves in your browser after every segment, so you can stop and resume without an account.
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum.
— The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde