“It must be a cult,” he said-an ungrateful response from the man to whom “The Prophet” had been a cash cow for more than forty years.

When Knopf was asked, in 1965, who the audience for “The Prophet” was, he replied that he had no idea. The critics will no doubt greet it with the same indifference they have shown Gibran ever since his death, in 1931. The Everyman’s volume contains twelve of them. While most people know Gibran only as the author of “The Prophet,” he wrote seventeen books, nine in Arabic and eight in English.

Presumably in honor of this commercial feat, Everyman’s Library has now brought out “Kahlil Gibran: The Collected Works” ($27.50), with a pretty red binding and a gold ribbon for a bookmark.

Apart from a brief effort during the twenties, “The Prophet” has never been advertised. “The Prophet” was a hit long before the sixties (it made good money even during the Depression), and sales after that decade have never been less than healthy-a record all the more impressive in that it is due almost entirely to word of mouth. But the book’s popularity should not be laid entirely at the door of the hippies. “The Prophet” started fast-it sold out its first printing in a month-and then it got faster, until, in the nineteen-sixties, its sales sometimes reached five thousand copies a week. Its words turn up in advertisements for marriage counsellors, chiropractors, learning-disabilities specialists, and face cream. It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders, and the news that your son is gay. “The Prophet” has been recited at countless weddings and funerals. There are public schools named for Gibran in Brooklyn and Yonkers. Since its publication, in 1923, “The Prophet” has sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone. Third is Kahlil Gibran, who owes his place on that list to one book, “The Prophet,” a collection of twenty-six prose poems, delivered as sermons by a fictional wise man in a faraway time and place. Shakespeare, we are told, is the best-selling poet of all time. Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library Told he was a mystic-'a young prophet'-he began to see himself that way.

The Firm by Robin Waterfield