Mark Twain? Caleb Thomas Winchester? Frank Norris? Otto F. Ege? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Classic works of literature are sometimes difficult or tedious to read. Apparently, a humorist once said something like the following:
(1) Definition of a classic—something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
(2) A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and no one wants to read.
This notion has been credited to Mark Twain, but I have not yet seen a precise citation, and I am unsure of the phrasing. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1900 Mark Twain delivered a speech at the Nineteenth Century Club in New York, and he employed this quip; however, he did not take credit for the line. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he’s right. He talked as if he was pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would suppose that he never had read it. I don’t believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don’t want to.
That’s something that you just want to take on trust. It’s a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic—something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Twain attributed the joke to Caleb Thomas Winchester who was a Professor of English Literature at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.2
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1897 Mark Twain published a travel book titled “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World”, and Twain began the 25th chapter with an epigraph expressing a similar sentiment about classic works of literature:3
“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.
— Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Twain’s friend and literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, published a multi-volume biography of the humorist. The third volume appeared in 1912, and it included an excerpt from Twain’s speech delivered in 1900 which included the joke:4
It’s a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic—something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
The quotation above is about unenthusiastic readers, but there exists an analogous remark about unhappy writers. In 1915 the following passage from novelist Frank Norris appeared posthumously in “The Bellman”:5
I write with great difficulty, but have managed somehow to accomplish 40 short stories (all published in fugitive fashion) and five novels within the last three years, and a lot of special unsigned articles. Believe my forte is the novel. Don’t like to write, but like having written.
A separate Quote Investigator article about Norris’s remark is available here.
In 1943 a compact and slightly inaccurate version of the quotation under examination appeared in “Thesaurus of Epigrams” edited by Edmund Fuller. Twain received credit instead of Winchester:6
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. —Mark Twain
In 1949 educator Otto F. Ege published a piece in the “College Art Journal”. Ege employed a version of the quotation with “everyone” instead of “everybody”:7
Mark Twain had characterized a classic as something everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read.
In 1955 “Quote: The Weekly Digest” printed another version of the saying using the word “everyone” instead of “everybody and “no one” instead of “nobody”:8
A classic is a book everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.—Public Service, London.
In 1976 the valuable reference work “Mark Twain Speaking” edited by Paul Fatout reprinted the 1900 speech by Twain. Thus, the quotation achieved further distribution.9
In 2002 “The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams” published the following entry:10
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain speech, 20 November 1900, Nineteenth Century Club, New York, quoting Professor Caleb Winchester, ‘The Disappearance of Literature’
In 2023 “The New Yorker” published a piece which included a version of the saying:11
Without new people in the comic-book stores, though, and without stories that hold a new audience, Marvel comic books risk becoming what Mark Twain said a classic was: “something that everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to read.” Not even Galactus wants that.
In conclusion, Mark Twain did deliver this remark within a dinner speech in 1900; but he credited the quip to Caleb Thomas Winchester. During subsequent decades the phrasing has evolved.
Image Notes: Picture of a book shelf filled with classic works of literature from Eilis Garvey at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1910, Mark Twain’s Speeches by Mark Twain, Disappearance of Literature, Address at the Dinner of the Nineteenth Century Club at Sherry’s in New York on November 20, 1900, Start Page 193, Quote Page 194, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1976, Mark Twain Speaking, Edited by Paul Fatout, Speech: The Disappearance of Literature, Location: Nineteenth Century Club dinner, Date: November 20, 1900, See note on Page 360, Published by University of Iowa Press, Iowa City. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1897, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), (Chapter 25 Epigraph), Quote Page 241, American Publishing Company, Hartford, Connecticut; Also Doubleday & McClure Company, New York. (Internet Archive) link ↩︎
- 1912, Mark Twain: A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens by Albert Bigelow Paine, Volume 3 of 4, Chapter 213: Mark Twain – General Spokesman, Quote Page 1120, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1915 December 4, The Bellman, Volume 19, The Bellman’s Book Plate, The Writing Grind, (Acknowledgement to Detroit Saturday Night), Start Page 642, Quote Page 643, Column 1, Published by The Bellman Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1943 Copyright, Thesaurus of Epigrams, Edited by Edmund Fuller, Topic: Literature, Quote Page 191, Crown Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans; HathiTrust) ↩︎
- 1949 Autumn, College Art Journal, Volume 9, Number 1, Illustration as a Fine Art by Otto F. Ege, Start Page 3, Quote Page 9, Published by the College Art Association of America. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1955 April 3, Quote: The Weekly Digest, Volume 29, Number 14, Book Briefs (Epigraph), Quote Page 7, Column 2, Published by Droke House, Indianapolis, Indiana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1976, Mark Twain Speaking, Edited by Paul Fatout, Speech: The Disappearance of Literature, Location: Nineteenth Century Club dinner, Date: November 20, 1900, Start Page 358, Quote Page 358 and 359, Published by University of Iowa Press, Iowa City. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 2002 (2001 Copyright), The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams by M. J. Cohen, Topic: Reading, Quote Page 330, Penguin Books, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2023 September 20, The New Yorker, Under Review: How Comic Books Became Classics by Stephanie Burt, Publisher Condé Nast, New York. (Accessed via The New Yorker website at newyorker.com on March 23, 2024) link ↩︎