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Who really said it

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it

Written by Groucho Marx 1890–1977 · American comedian, actor & writer
Verified Free to reuse

Groucho really wrote this — not as a stage ad-lib but as a paid-in-wit book blurb, printed in 1929 on the rear panel of the dust jacket of Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, the first book by his future screenwriter S. J. Perelman. Quote Investigator ↗ traced it to the jacket itself and to a newspaper printing dated 7 October 1929, and the wording above is the 1929 wording.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it” Groucho Marx, jacket blurb for S. J. Perelman's Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929). Verified via Quotle.info.

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In context

Evoking the world of Groucho Marx — American comedian, actor & writer. Theme: "From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it". 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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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where it was printed

Work
Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge
Placement
Groucho’s blurb on the rear panel of the dust jacket; the book is by S. J. Perelman
Published
Horace Liveright, New York, 1929
Earliest press printing
The Greeley Daily Tribune, 7 October 1929, p. 10, col. 3

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

This is the 1929 wording. Quote Investigator ↗ found it in the 7 October 1929 Greeley Daily Tribune library-acquisitions column and in a Google Books snippet of the book’s dust jacket. A dealer transcribing the jacket of a surviving 1929 copy — a third printing, issued the same month as the first — renders the closing sentence as “Someday I intend to read it” ↗ — the same joke, a hair of spacing and tense apart.

1929 book scan
Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge (1929) at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: Book Blurb: I Was Convulsed with Laughter

Paper trail

  • 7 October 1929 — the earliest printing documented by Quote Investigator ↗: a “New Books Received by Greeley Library” column in The Greeley Daily Tribune of Greeley, Colorado, carrying the remark credited to Groucho Marx about Perelman’s new book.
  • 1929 — the blurb sat on the rear panel of the Horace Liveright dust jacket, and dealers cataloguing jacketed 1929 copies still transcribe it off the jacket ↗. QI also cites a Google Books snippet of the jacket page and a 2010 American Dialect Society message from Fred Shapiro reporting the quote verified.
  • 9 February 1962 — LIFE ran a close-up on Perelman with the verbs flipped, and that printing is the citation Wikiquote gives for the line ↗.
  • 1989 — QI records that Leo Rosten’s Giant Book of Laughter put a reworded version on its back flap, re-aimed at a book of Rosten’s own ↗.
Public domain

The blurb was first published in 1929 — on the dust jacket of Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (Horace Liveright, New York) and in The Greeley Daily Tribune of 7 October 1929. United States works first published before 1931 are in the public domain, so the sentence itself is free to quote and reproduce. Note that the surrounding book text is Perelman’s, published the same year and 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

The name is right. The wording usually isn’t.

This is one of the rare famous Groucho lines he demonstrably wrote. What travels badly is the wording — and, in one case, which book he was talking about.

LIFE magazine, 9 February 1962 Reworded

Its close-up on Perelman printed the quip with the verbs flipped — “picked your book up … laid it down” — and Quote Investigator notes that modern instances have altered the original wording ↗. That magazine printing is the citation Wikiquote attaches to the line ↗, which is why the flipped version is the one most people meet.

Leo Rosten’s Giant Book of Laughter Re-aimed

QI records ↗ that the 1989 printing (copyright 1985) carried the quip on its back flap applied to a book of Rosten’s own rather than Perelman’s, reworded to “I could not stop laughing. Some day I hope to read it.”

Quote aggregators Unsourced

Most sites strip the blurb of its origin entirely. The Quotations Page ↗, for instance, runs a hybrid — “picked up your book … laid it down” — credited to Groucho with no book, no date and no publication named.

The line is Groucho’s, and it has an address: the back of the dust jacket of S. J. Perelman’s first book, published by Horace Liveright in 1929, as traced by Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

A blurb is supposed to say the book is good. Groucho’s says only that holding the book was hilarious, and then cheerfully admits he never opened it — and Horace Liveright printed it on the jacket anyway. That is the whole joke: the sentence is structured exactly like praise and delivers none.

The book it sat on was Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, S. J. Perelman’s first, a collection of humorous pieces that Wikipedia describes as largely juvenilia ↗, many written while Perelman was a student at Brown. Perelman went on to write for the Marx Brothers on screen — a working relationship the same article records as a famously prickly one.

It reads like a rave right up to the last five words.

Read the full story

The version most people know is slightly different: “picked your book up … laid it down.” That flip came from a 1962 LIFE close-up on Perelman, and it is the version Wikiquote cites ↗. Both carry the same joke; only one is what the 1929 jacket said.

Surviving 1929 copies preserve the blurb. A dealer catalogue for a jacketed one transcribes it off the rear panel ↗, closing with “Someday I intend to read it” — a hair away from the “Some day I intend reading it” that the 1929 newspaper printing and the jacket snippet give.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Creativity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Book Blurb: I Was Convulsed with Laughterquoteinvestigator.com

The full tracing: the 7 October 1929 newspaper printing, the Google Books dust-jacket snippet, and the later rewrites.
Groucho Marxen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line among Groucho's quotes, addressed to Perelman about Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge, citing LIFE (9 February 1962).
Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge (1929)archive.org

Full scan of the book the blurb was written for — Perelman's debut, a collection of his early humorous pieces.
Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge — 1929 copy in jacketbetweenthecovers.com

Rare-book dealer description of a Horace Liveright 1929 third printing (issued the same month as the first), transcribing the Groucho blurb from the jacket's rear panel.
S. J. Perelmanen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the humorist whose first book carried the blurb (1904–1979), including his Marx Brothers screenwriting.
Groucho Marxen.wikipedia.org

Life dates, real name, and his own claim that he would rather be remembered as a writer.

The author

About Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx

1890–1977 · American comedian, actor & writer

Julius Henry Marx — Groucho — was the greasepaint-moustached, cigar-waving centre of the Marx Brothers, working through vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio and television. He was also, by his own preference, a writer: he published essays in The New Yorker and the books Groucho and Me (1959), Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1963) and The Groucho Letters (1967), and once said he would rather be remembered as a writer ↗ than as a comedian. This blurb is that side of him in one sentence: a joke built entirely out of syntax.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Groucho Marx, jacket blurb for S. J. Perelman, Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929), rear panel of the dust jacket. Earliest press printing documented by Quote Investigator: “New Books Received by Greeley Library,” The Greeley Daily Tribune, October 7, 1929, p. 10, col. 3.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/from-the-moment-i-picked-up-your-book-until-i-put-it-down-i/

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