Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ "Ben-Hur" as the most influential Christian book of the 19th century, while others have identified it as one of the best-selling novels of all time. Carl Van Doren wrote that "Ben-Hur" was, along with "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the first fiction many Americans read. Wallace's original plan was to write a story of the biblical magi as a magazine serial, which he began in 1873, but he had changed its focus by 1874. "Ben-Hur" begins with the story of the magi, but the remainder of the novel connects the story of Christ with the adventures of Wallace's fictional character, Judah Ben-Hur.
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ million copies of the book were sold, and in 1913, Sears Roebuck ordered another one million copies, at that time the largest single-year print edition in American history, and sold them for 39 cents apiece. Within 20 years of its publication, "Ben-Hur" was "second only to the Bible as the best-selling book in America", and remained in second position until Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" (1936) surpassed it. A 1946 edition of "Ben-Hur" published by Grosset and Dunlap boasted that 26 million copies of the novel were in print. With the release of the 1959 film adaptation of the