 There were 40 editions and reprints between 1762 and 1800 and reached a total of 70 editions and reprints through 1830 in Britain and North America.The readers of Gessner's version of the biblical story belonged to a poorer and less educated public.While sophisticated readers on the Continent found delight in the Arcadian pantheism
of the idyll, the poorer masses of England and North America were attracted to the epic's mixture of sentimental and pious feelings, hymnal pathos and cultural criticism, all of which was intensified in Mary Collyer's translation.