Which book has been translated and retranslated not only into all

the major European languages into many others,

Icelandic, Coptic, Maori, Maltese, Inuit, Arabic, Turkish, Persian
and Bengali; w taken by Vitus Bering on his expedition of to
explore what lay between north-eastern Siberia and the North
American continent; and had a powerful effect on the young
Benjamin Franklin and John Ruskin, besides Ixing familiarly cited
by a variety Of fictional characters, the youthful David CopH
field and the Old Steward in
Bible or one Of Shakespeare's plays might Seem
likely candidates, until one adds that this tv.ok has also generated an
by succession Of English pantomimes, a filril by
Luis Bunuel and countless allusions in cartoons, jokes and advertising. answer is, Of which with
few other English fictions, such as Gulliver's Travels and Alice in
the distinction of being known about in some form or
other, however truncated, by millions of rxople who have never
read the original. But only Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and
Brx a quasi-myth(F
logical StatiB in modern in each the story is
much more widely recognised than its author, whose other writings
are, relatively speaking, unfamiliar.
in
his day known as a controand pamphleteer rather than writer,
was an immediate success. were five reprintings Within

four months Of its publication in April and

before Defrx's death in Almost at once the novel was pirated,
and imitated in English, and translated into
French, German and Dutch. Within the first half-century there
appeared, trsides the tnnslations, numerotB European imitations
(the including in Germany alone. And by the
end of the following century there existed, including adaptations,