Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a novel by Lew Wallace published on November 12, 1880 by Harper & Brothers.

The novel was a phenomenal best-seller, surpassing Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) as the best-selling American novel and retained this distinction until the 1936 publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Book sales then surpassed Gone with the Wind, following the release of the highly successful 1959 MGM film adaptation; the film winning eleven Academy Awards


Since its first publication, Ben-Hur has never been out of print. By 1900 it had been printed in 36 English-language editions and translated into 20 others, including Indonesian and Braille. In 1912, Sears Roebuck published one million copies to sell for 39 cents apiece: the largest single-year print edition in American history.[1] It outsold every book except the Bible until Gone With the Wind came out in 1936, and returned to the top of the list again in the 1960s. It often appears on lists of great American literature, which has been a source of frustration for many literary critics over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur:_A_Tale_of_the_Christ

http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2009-11/BenHur.html


It grew to be the best-selling American novel of the 19th century.[11] The book has never been out of print and has been filmed four times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Wallace