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Who really said it

Easy Reading Is Hard Writing

Not Lord Byron — earliest strong match is Thomas Hood Thomas Hood 1799–1845 · English poet, humorist & Athenaeum contributor
Disputed Free to reuse

Byron never wrote this. The earliest strong match documented by Quote Investigator is Thomas Hood, who put “the easiest reading is d__d hard writing” — already inside quotation marks, as something in circulation — in his letter “Copyright and Copywrong,” printed in The Athenaeum on 22 April 1837. Byron’s real line, in Beppo (1818), is the wish “Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!” — which is very probably where the misattribution began.

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Easy Reading Is Hard Writing” not Lord Byron. The earliest strong match is Thomas Hood, who quoted it as "the easiest reading is d__d hard writing" in his letter "Copyright and Copywrong," The Athenaeum, 22 April 1837 — already in quotation marks, as a saying then in circulation. Byron's actual line, in Beppo (1818), is "Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!" Chronology: Quote Investigator. Via quotle.info

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In context

Evoking the world of Thomas Hood — English poet, humorist & Athenaeum contributor. Theme: "Easy Reading Is Hard Writing". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The earliest documented appearance

Earliest strong match
Thomas Hood, letter to the editor of The Athenaeum, 22 April 1837
Printed as
Copyright and Copywrong
Byron's actual line
“Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!” — Beppo, A Venetian Story (1818)
Status
Proverbial — Hood set it in quotation marks, so it was already circulating

And firstly, as to how he writes, upon which head there is a wonderful diversity of opinions; one thinks that writing is “as easy as lying,” and pictures the author sitting carefully at his desk “with his glove on,” like Sir Roger de Coverley’s poetical ancestor. A second holds that “the easiest reading is d__d hard writing,” and imagines Time himself beating his brains over an extempore. The Athenaeum, 22 April 1837

The Athenaeum censored “damned” to “d__d.” Note Hood’s own quotation marks: he is reporting a saying, not minting one. The tidy modern wording — “easy reading is hard writing” — appears unattributed eight years later, in an 1845 book review in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine.

Periodical scan
The Athenaeum, 1837, p. 287
Quote Investigator: the full dated chronology

How the line travelled

  • 1772 — the opposite maxim. Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “Clio’s Protest,” circulated by 1772, carries the couplet “You write with ease, to shew your breeding; / But easy writing’s vile hard reading.” The words are the same; the argument is reversed. Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1818 — Byron, and the seed of the error. In Beppo Byron writes “Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!” — a wish, not a maxim, and with no ‘hard writing’ anywhere near it. Read the passage at Wikisource ↗
  • 22 April 1837 — the first print sighting. Thomas Hood, in The Athenaeum: “the easiest reading is d__d hard writing,” quoted as something people say. The Athenaeum, p. 287 ↗
  • 1884 onward — the famous names. A Daily News reviewer gives it to Byron in 1884; The Engineering Magazine gives it to Thackeray in 1898; Maya Angelou gives it to Hawthorne in 1979 and again in 1990. Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗
Public domain

The wording is a proverb rather than one author’s property, and every documented source for it is long out of copyright in the United States: Hood’s letter in The Athenaeum (1837), the unattributed “easy reading is hard writing” in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine (1845), and Charles Allston Collins’s use of it in All the Year Round (1860) all predate 1931 by a wide margin. Byron’s Beppo (1818) is likewise public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Everyone who has been handed this line

Few maxims have been passed around as promiscuously as this one. Because it flatters writers, it gets pinned on whichever famous writer the speaker admires — and because a near-identical saying runs in the opposite direction, even the careful get it backwards.

Lord Byron Misattributed

Byron wrote “Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!” in Beppo (1818). He used the words ‘easy writing’ and ‘easy reading’ and neither ‘hard writing’ nor ‘hard reading’ — he was wishing for a gift, not describing a cost. Quote Investigator judges those lines the probable source of the confusion, and records a London Daily News review of 21 August 1884 asserting “as Byron used to say, easy reading means hard writing.” Quote Investigator ↗

Nathaniel Hawthorne No evidence

Angelou quoted “Easy reading is damned hard writing” at a Richmond press conference in 1979 and again in her 1990 Paris Review interview, crediting Hawthorne both times. Quote Investigator finds no substantive evidence for Hawthorne, and Wikiquote lists it under his Disputed heading ↗, noting the line is also attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan Reversed

Sheridan really did write, in “Clio’s Protest” (circulated by 1772), “You write with ease, to shew your breeding; / But easy writing’s vile hard reading.” That is the opposite claim — easy writing makes hard reading. Graham’s American Monthly Magazine in 1849 and the Methodist Quarterly Review in 1867 both handed him the inverted version instead. Quote Investigator ↗

William Makepeace Thackeray Misattributed

A book review in the New York Engineering Magazine in 1898 opened “‘Easy reading means hard writing,’ said Thackeray” — an attribution nothing in the earlier record supports. Quote Investigator ↗

The honest answer is that it is a proverb with a first witness rather than an author: Thomas Hood printed it in The Athenaeum on 22 April 1837 and put quotation marks round it, meaning he was already repeating it. Quote Investigator provisionally credits Hood ↗ while noting an earlier source may yet surface.

Context

Why this one keeps changing hands

There are really two mirrored sayings here, and almost every misattribution comes from confusing them. The older one is a put-down: writing that came easily is painful to read. The newer one is a compliment turned inside out: prose that reads easily cost somebody enormous effort. Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote the first; Thomas Hood is the earliest person known to have printed the second.

Byron sits between them, which is exactly why his name attached itself. In Beppo he wished aloud for “the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading” — both halves of the vocabulary, none of the argument. Quote Investigator judges those lines the probable source of the confusion, and by 1884 a London reviewer was simply asserting that “as Byron used to say, easy reading means hard writing.”

Byron wished for the art of easy writing. He never said that easy reading was hard writing.

The long drift: 1772 to 1990

After Hood, the saying travelled without an owner. An 1845 book review in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine used the now-familiar wording — “easy reading is hard writing” — with no attribution at all, and Thomas Keightley’s 1848 Horace has “easy reading is usually very hard writing.” In 1851 a Washington reviewer credited it to “the schoolboy.”

Then the famous names arrived. Graham’s American Monthly Magazine pinned a garbled version on Sheridan in 1849 and the Methodist Quarterly Review did the same in 1867. Charles Allston Collins called it a “rule” in Dickens’s All the Year Round in 1860; Anthony Trollope gave a character the thought “Easy reading requires hard writing” in Kept in the Dark (1882). Byron got the credit in 1884, Thackeray in 1898.

The modern chain runs through Maya Angelou, who quoted it at a Richmond press conference in 1979 and again in her 1990 Paris Review interview, crediting Nathaniel Hawthorne both times. Nothing in the record supports Hawthorne, and Wikiquote files the line under Hawthorne’s “Disputed” heading, noting it is also thrown at Ernest Hemingway.

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Quote Origin: Easy Reading Is Hard Writingquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: a dated chronology from Sheridan (1772) to Maya Angelou (1990), crediting Thomas Hood's 1837 Athenaeum letter as the earliest strong match and flagging the 1884 Byron misattribution.
Quote Origin: Easy Writing's Vile Hard Readingquoteinvestigator.com

The companion piece on the mirrored maxim — Sheridan's couplet from “Clio's Protest” and the Byron passage that seeded the confusion.
The Athenaeum, 22 April 1837, p. 287books.google.com

Scan of the volume of The Athenaeum carrying Hood's “Copyright and Copywrong” letter, at the page where the phrase appears.
Byron, Beppo (Coleridge & Prothero edition)en.wikisource.org

Full text of Beppo, where Byron's actual couplet — “Oh that I had the art of easy writing / What should be easy reading!” — can be read in place.
Nathaniel Hawthorne — Disputed quotesen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote files “Easy reading is damn hard writing” under Hawthorne's Disputed section, noting it is also thrown at Hemingway.
Thomas Hooden.wikipedia.org

Biography of the poet and humorist (1799–1845) whose Athenaeum letter carries the earliest documented instance.

The man who wrote it down first

Who was Thomas Hood?

Thomas Hood

1799–1845 · English poet, humorist & Athenaeum contributor

Thomas Hood was an English poet, editor and humorist, born in London on 23 May 1799 and dead there on 3 May 1845, best remembered now for The Song of the Shirt and The Bridge of Sighs. He was a regular contributor to The Athenaeum, and his 1837 letters to its editor under the title “Copyright and Copywrong” argued the writer’s case in the copyright fight of the day. He is the first person known to have set this maxim in print — though he framed it as a saying he was repeating, not one he had coined.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Hood, Thomas. “Copyright and Copywrong.” Letter to the editor of The Athenaeum (London), 22 April 1837, 285–87, phrase at 287. Identified as the earliest strong match in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Easy Reading Is Hard Writing,” 5 November 2014.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Easy Reading Is Hard Writing’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/easy-reading-is-hard-writing/

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