"The Gospel of Buddha" by American author Paul Carus was first published in 1894.
This work soon became a worldwide bestseller, completely eclipsing the one previous attempt to popularise Buddhism in the West, Sir Edwin Arnold's "The Light of Asia". Carus collected accounts of the life and teaching of the Buddha from many sources and fashioned a coherent and gripping narrative which would be understood by Americans as very much like a Christian "gospel". "The Gospel of Buddha" was quickly translated into Japanese and other Eastern languages, and was taken up by teachers in the Buddhist world.