Comparing the Reception of Quo vadis and Ben-Hur in the United States, 1896–1913

Shortly after the Boston publisher Little, Brown and Company issued Jeremiah Curtin’s English translation of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis: A Tale of the Time of Nero, it was soon compared in American newspapers to Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The plot of Wallace’s novel, published in 1880 and by 1896 the most commercially successful American novel of its generation, concluded before the reign of Nero, so Sienkiewicz’s novel was widely perceived as a chronological sequel or historical comparandum to Ben-Hur. Comparisons ranged from publication announcements to advertising to literary analyses in contemporary newspapers. Similarly, when large-budget dramatic adaptations of both Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur were in development and production during the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a perceived head-to-head competition. This chapter reviews the contrasting backgrounds of the authors—Wallace being an American evangelical, Sienkiewicz a Polish Catholic—and the parallel successes of Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur during this period (mostly before the American premier of Guazzoni’s film) in the arenas of literature, drama, film, and business commerce. Its source material consists mostly of reviews, advertising, and analyses published in contemporary American newspapers.