 Translated by Mary J. Serrano, it was heavily abridged and bowdlerized, her relatives seeing to it that a good deal of material they considered unflattering to the family was removed.British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her journal as "a book without a parallel", and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw.The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read the original French version over eight days in June 1890.