and enquiries as to when and of what poor Mrs. Wallace died. I laughed at first, but the condolences multiplied until finally I told the good woman that having got me into the trouble she must now get me out, which she did by adding the words--'Who still abides with me.' / The device was perfect." Wallace apparently also received many marriage proposals due to the misunderstanding. Sales and subsequent publication Initial sales of Ben-Hur were slow; only 2,800 copies were sold in the first seven months, but within two years, the book had become popular among readers. At the beginning of its third year, 750 copies were sold each month, and by 1885, the monthly average was 1,200 copies. By 1886, the book was earning Wallace about $11,000 in annual royalties, a substantial amount at the time, and began to sell, on average, an estimated 50,000 copies per year. By 1889, Harper and Brothers had sold 400,000 copies. Ten years after its initial publication, the book had reached sustained sales of 4,500 per month. A study conducted in 1893 of American public library book loans found that Ben-Hur had the highest percentage (83%) of loans among contemporary novels. In addition to the publication of the complete novel, two parts were published as separate volumes: The First Christmas (1899) and The Chariot Race (1912). In 1900, Ben-Hur became the best-selling American novel of the 19th century, surpassing Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. By that time it had been printed in 36 English-language editions and translated into 20 other languages, including Indonesian and Braille. Literary historian James D. Hart explained that by the turn of the century, "If every American did not read the novel, almost everyone was aware of it." Between 1880 and 1912, an estimated one 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 book, Ben-Hur