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Who really said it

I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me

Not Dale Carnegie — actually Walter Alexander Raleigh Walter Alexander Raleigh 1861–1922 · Oxford’s first Professor of English Literature
Disputed Free to reuse

The line comes from a letter Walter Alexander Raleigh — the Oxford English professor, not the Elizabethan explorer — wrote to T. H. Warren, President of Magdalen College, on 28 April 1907, first printed in The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922), Volume 2 ↗ (Methuen, 1926) at page 314. Dale Carnegie quoted it in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) and credited Professor Raleigh by name; as Quote Investigator documents ↗, Carnegie is the popularizer, not the author.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me” Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861–1922), Oxford's first Professor of English Literature, in a letter to T. H. Warren, 28 April 1907; first published in The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922), vol. 2 (Methuen, 1926), p. 314. Not Dale Carnegie, who quoted it in 1948, and not Sir Walter Raleigh the Elizabethan explorer.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Dale Carnegie. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

Evoking the world of Walter Alexander Raleigh — Oxford's first Professor of English Literature. Theme: "I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me". 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.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me". 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

The letter, 28 April 1907

Source
The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922), Volume 2
Written
Letter to T. H. Warren, President of Magdalen College, Oxford — 28 April 1907
First published
1926, edited by Lady Raleigh (Methuen & Co., London), page 314
Popularized by
Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948)

Everyone says it was a horribly difficult thing to write on Shakespeare. So it was and is, I suppose, but I didn’t think of it that way, or I couldn’t have written. I can’t write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me,—which is all that any one can do. I feel as free to think about Shakespeare as to think about the moon, without putting myself into competition. So I was not conscious of impudence, or even of ambition. Letter to T. H. Warren, 1907

Transcribed from the 1926 Methuen printing, volume 2, page 314. Note the clause that almost always gets dropped in circulation: “—which is all that any one can do.”

Published letter, 1926
Read the letter on page 314 of the 1926 scan
The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922), Vol. 2 (Methuen, 1926) at Internet Archive

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ is the anchor here, and its conclusion is unambiguous: Professor Walter Alexander Raleigh deserves credit for a statement he wrote in a letter in 1907, and it was not penned by Sir Walter Raleigh of the Elizabethan era. QI cites the letter to Thomas Herbert Warren, dated April 28, 1907, published in the 1926 Letters, volume 2, page 314.
  • We checked the primary source rather than taking it on trust: the OCR of the 1926 Methuen volume 2 ↗ carries the heading “To T. H. Warren, President of Magdalen” on page 314, followed by the sentence in exactly this wording — matching QI’s citation.
  • The author is the Oxford man, not the explorer: Wikipedia ↗ gives his dates as 5 September 1861 – 13 May 1922, records that he was the first holder of Oxford’s Chair of English Literature from 1904, and lists his Shakespeare (1907) — scanned in full at the Internet Archive ↗ — the book he is discussing in the letter.
  • Where the wrong credit comes from: Carnegie quoted the line in 1948 and named Professor Raleigh, but later compilations dropped the distinction, and aggregator pages ↗ now cite the 1926 Letters while labelling the author with the Elizabethan explorer’s dates.
Public domain

The wording is from a letter written in 1907 and first published in The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922) (Methuen, London) in 1926 — before 1931, so the volume is in the public domain in the United States; Raleigh himself died in 1922. Dale Carnegie’s 1948 How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, where many readers first met the line, remains in copyright, which is why we quote Raleigh’s letter and only describe Carnegie’s use of it.

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

Two wrong names, one right one

This sentence circulates under two names that did not write it. One is a case of mistaken identity between two men called Sir Walter Raleigh; the other is the bestselling author who quoted it accurately and got the credit anyway.

Sir Walter Raleigh, the Elizabethan statesman and explorer (died 1618) Name collision

Quote Investigator’s conclusion is blunt: the quotation was not penned by the Sir Walter Raleigh of the Elizabethan era, and the ambiguous name is the whole problem. The credit spread through compilations that printed the bare name — QI documents Andrew McAleer’s 2008 The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists repeating it ↗ — and today aggregators such as LibQuotes ↗ cite the correct 1926 Letters while attaching the explorer’s dates, 1552–1618, and a 2019 blog post reprints it as by “Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618), English explorer and writer” ↗.

Dale Carnegie Credited in error

Carnegie is where most readers met the line: he quoted it in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) and was careful to say he did not mean the Sir Walter of cloak-in-the-mud fame but the Oxford professor. QI lists Carnegie among the names the line gets pinned on ↗ and treats him strictly as a quoter, citing his book at chapter 16, page 125.

“I cannot write a book commensurate to Shakespeare…” Variant

QI lists this second version alongside the familiar one ↗. The 1926 printing of the letter reads “commensurate with Shakespeare,” and continues past the usual stopping point: “—which is all that any one can do.”

Walter Alexander Raleigh, Oxford’s first Professor of English Literature, wrote it to T. H. Warren on 28 April 1907; it reached print in 1926, on page 314 of volume 2 of his collected letters ↗, and Carnegie found it there.

Context

Why he wrote it

Raleigh had just published Shakespeare (1907) for Macmillan, and the reaction he kept hearing was that writing about Shakespeare at all was an act of nerve. His reply, in a thank-you letter to T. H. Warren, was the most useful sentence anyone has written about creative intimidation: he had never been in competition with Shakespeare in the first place. The full clause in the printed letter runs on past the famous stopping point — “which is all that any one can do.”

1948

—which is all that any one can do.

Read the full story

Carnegie found the line and put it to work in the chapter of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living about being yourself rather than imitating others, describing how it changed his own approach to writing. He was careful to signal that he did not mean the Sir Walter of cloak-in-the-mud fame, but the Oxford professor — a distinction that Quote Investigator notes ↗ later compilers did not keep. In 2008 Andrew McAleer’s The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists reprinted the line under the bare name “Sir Walter Raleigh,” and the aggregators followed.

Explore

Filed under

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

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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 Investigator: “I Can’t Write a Book Commensurate with Shakespeare”quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: traces the line to Raleigh’s 28 April 1907 letter to T. H. Warren, published 1926, and shows Carnegie (1948) and McAleer (2008) as later quoters.
The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922), Volume 2 (1926)archive.org

The primary source. Full scan and OCR text of the Methuen edition; the letter to T. H. Warren, with this sentence, begins on page 314.
Walter Raleigh (professor) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (5 September 1861 – 13 May 1922), the Oxford chair he held from 1904, and the 1926 two-volume publication of his letters.
Raleigh’s Shakespeare (1907)archive.org

The Macmillan book whose reception prompted the remark, scanned in full.
Walter Raleigh (professor) — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

The professor’s Wikiquote page — useful mainly as a caution: it does not carry this line at all, so it offers no independent sourcing for it.
LibQuotes entry for the quotelibquotes.com

The mixup in miniature: cites the correct 1926 Letters as its source while stamping the Elizabethan explorer’s dates (1552–1618) on the author.

The man who actually wrote it

About Walter Alexander Raleigh

Walter Alexander Raleigh

1861–1922 · Oxford's first Professor of English Literature

Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861–1922) was the first holder of the Chair of English Literature at Oxford, a post he held from 1904 until his death, and a fellow of Merton College from 1914. He wrote Style (1897), Milton (1900) and the well-received Shakespeare (1907) — the book whose reception prompted this remark — and was working on an official history of the war in the air when he died. His correspondence was gathered after his death and published as The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922) in 1926, edited by Lady Raleigh; he shares a name, and constant credit-confusion, with the Elizabethan statesman who died in 1618.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Raleigh, Walter Alexander. The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (1879–1922). Edited by Lady Raleigh. Vol. 2. London: Methuen & Co., 1926, 314 (letter to T. H. Warren, President of Magdalen College, 28 April 1907). Quoted in Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948), ch. 16, 125.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-cant-write-a-book-commensurate-with-shakespeare-but-i-can/

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