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Who really said it

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Mark Twain — but not in these words Mark Twain 1835–1910 · American novelist, humorist and lecturer
Disputed Free to reuse

Twain really did make this joke, and he really did reach for the word “greatly” — but no text of his reads this way. The note he wrote out by hand in London in 1897 said “the report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration,” which is the earliest published version Quote Investigator can find ↗. When he retold the story in his own autobiography nine years later he wrote it as “Say the report is greatly exaggerated.” The famous six-word line matches neither: it was the newspapers that produced it, and The Commercial Appeal of Memphis had it in print by 6 November 1897.

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” Mark Twain — but not in these words. His 1897 note read "the report of my death was an exaggeration" (New York Journal, 2 June 1897); in his 1906 autobiography he made it "Say the report is greatly exaggerated." The familiar six-word version matches neither. — Quotle.info Verbatim: “The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

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Provenance

Two real wordings, neither of them the famous one

What Twain wrote in 1897
“The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.”
First published in
New York Journal, 2 June 1897 — from a note Twain wrote in London for the paper’s correspondent Frank Marshall White
Twain’s own retelling
“Chapters from My Autobiography.—II,” The North American Review, No. DXCIX, 21 September 1906
Where “grossly” was popularised
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), ch. CXCVII — though newspapers had it first: The Niobrara Tribune, Nebraska, 5 January 1898

This reminds me — nine years ago, when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, a report was cabled to the American journals that I was dying. I was not the one. It was another Clemens, a cousin of mine — Dr. J. Ross Clemens, now of St. Louis — who was due to die but presently escaped… One of these men was a gentle and kindly and grave and sympathetic Irishman, who hid his sorrow the best he could, and tried to look glad, and told me that his paper, the Evening Sun, had cabled him that it was reported in New York that I was dead. What should he cable in reply? I said — “Say the report is greatly exaggerated.” Twain’s own version, 1906

From Twain’s autobiographical installment in The North American Review of 21 September 1906. Note that this is Twain recalling the episode nine years on: he places the exchange with a correspondent of the Evening Sun, whereas the 1897 note that actually reached print was written for the New York Journal’s man, Frank Marshall White. Several reporters called on him that week.

Twain’s own autobiography, 1906
Read Chapters from My Autobiography at Project Gutenberg
Chapters from My Autobiography, The North American Review (1906–07), full text

How we checked this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ is the anchor here, and its conclusion is blunt: the earliest published report, on 2 June 1897, credited Twain with “The report of my death was an exaggeration,” and in the following days and weeks the adjectives “greatly” and “grossly” were added to the quip in some newspaper reports. “Greatly” turns up the very next day (The Evening Star, Washington, 3 June 1897, p. 4), and by 6 November 1897 The Commercial Appeal of Memphis was printing the familiar six words verbatim — “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — on page 4, column 2. QI also turns up the phrasing used of someone else entirely long before Twain: a Daily Examiner item of 25 January 1882 about the death of one John Davis being “greatly exaggerated.”
  • Wikiquote ↗ carries the 1897 note in its main sourced quotes section, dates it to London, 31 May 1897, addresses it to reporter Frank Marshall White, and then lists “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” separately under the label Misquote, adding that the paraphrase may be more popular than the original.
  • We read Twain’s own text rather than taking it second-hand. The installment headed North American Review, No. DXCIX, September 21, 1906 — Chapters from My Autobiography.—II contains the sentence “Say the report is greatly exaggerated,” exactly as printed, in the Project Gutenberg transcription ↗.
  • We also read Paine. Chapter CXCVII of Mark Twain: A Biography, Volume II, Part 2 ↗ has Clemens hand back the cable and say, “You don’t need as much as that. Just say the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” That is the version later compilations copied — QI traces the 1948 Mark Twain at Your Fingertips entry to it — but it is not the wording that became famous, and it is not the first appearance of “grossly” either.
Public domain

Every documented wording sits comfortably in the US public domain. The note was published in a newspaper in June 1897, Twain’s own retelling appeared in The North American Review in September 1906, and Paine’s biography followed in 1912 — all well before the 1931 US copyright cutoff, and Twain himself died in 1910. Nothing here is translated, so no separate translation copyright applies. The popular six-word variant has no identifiable modern author to claim 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

Right man, wrong words

This is not a fake Twain quote in the usual sense — he was in London, reporters really did turn up expecting an obituary, and he really did send them away with a joke. What went wrong is the wording, which drifted through newspapers and then through his own biographer until the version everyone repeats matches nothing Twain ever put on paper. The drift was fast: within five months The Commercial Appeal of Memphis was printing the familiar six words verbatim (6 November 1897) and crediting them to him.

“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” misquote

Plural “reports,” present tense “are” — this exact sentence appears in no Twain text. Wikiquote ↗ lists it under the label Misquote beneath the genuine 1897 note, and observes that the paraphrase may be more popular than the original.

Albert Bigelow Paine, Twain’s authorised biographer embellishment

Paine’s 1912 biography prints “Just say the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated” — verifiable in chapter CXCVII of the full text ↗. Twain had died in 1910, two years before the book appeared, so he was in no position to correct it, and later compilations carried his biographer’s wording forward — Quote Investigator traces the 1948 Mark Twain at Your Fingertips entry to it. The version that actually became famous, though, uses “greatly,” and it had been circulating in newspapers since 1897.

The deathbed-quip story itself context

The 1897 note was mostly Twain patiently explaining a mix-up: his cousin Dr. J. Ross Clemens had been ill in London and the wires had got the wrong Clemens. The joke is the last clause, not the point. The Mark Twain House and Museum ↗ has publicly owned up to printing the popular misworded version on its own ads and merchandise.

Twain did write “greatly exaggerated” — but in 1906, in his own autobiography, and the sentence was “Say the report is greatly exaggerated ↗.” The six words everyone quotes came from the newspapers, not from him: The Commercial Appeal of Memphis printed them verbatim on 6 November 1897, five months after the original note and nine years before the autobiography.

Context

Why the wires got it wrong

In 1897 Twain was living quietly at Tedworth Square in London, grinding out the travel book that became Following the Equator and seeing almost nobody — his household was still in mourning for his daughter Susy. Into that seclusion came a cable-driven panic: American papers had heard that Mark Twain was dying, and their London correspondents began arriving at his door one after another to confirm it. The man they wanted was a different Clemens entirely.

Twain wrote out a note by hand for the New York Journal’s correspondent, Frank Marshall White, explaining the mix-up and closing with the line that outlived everything else on the page. The Journal ran it on 2 June 1897. The joke, as Twain later put it himself, “hit the world pleasantly” — and then kept mutating, because a line that good gets retold far more often than it gets looked up.

Say the report is greatly exaggerated.

Read the full story

The rumour did not come from nowhere. The New York Herald ran its own story on 1 June 1897 describing Twain as “grievously ill and possibly dying” and in need of money, as Media Myth Alert documents ↗; the Journal’s piece the next day appeared under the headline “Mark Twain Amused.”

The best-remembered detail in the whole episode is the cable one of the reporters was carrying. Twain’s own 1906 account reproduces it as “If Mark Twain dying send five hundred words. If dead send a thousand,” and says it came from the New York World’s man; Paine, writing in 1912, gives it as “If Mark Twain very ill, five hundred words. If dead, send one thousand” and folds it into the same visit as the joke. The two accounts do not quite line up, which is a useful reminder that even the primary sources here are memories rather than transcripts.

Quote Investigator’s find of an 1882 Daily Examiner item using “greatly exaggerated” about another man’s reported death shows the phrasing was already a newspaper habit before Twain reached for it. That does not take the joke away from him — the wit is in the deadpan understatement, not the adjective — but it does explain why editors slid so easily into “greatly.”

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Filed under

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

Truth Mortality

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: Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggeratedquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 2 June 1897 first publication, the 1882 pre-Twain use of “greatly exaggerated,” and how the adjectives crept in.
Mark Twain — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the genuine 1897 note with its date and addressee, and files the popular six-word version explicitly as a misquote.
Chapters from My Autobiography (full text)gutenberg.org

Twain’s own 1906–07 North American Review installments. The 21 September 1906 chapter contains “Say the report is greatly exaggerated.”
Mark Twain: A Biography, Vol. II, Part 2gutenberg.org

Paine’s 1912 life of Twain. Chapter CXCVII is the best-known printing of the “grossly exaggerated” version — though the adjective was already in newspapers by January 1898.
A Quagmire of Quotationsmarktwainhouse.blogspot.com

The Mark Twain House and Museum correcting itself, and giving the 1897 note’s wording in full.
Twain’s famous 1897 quote: the back storymediamythalert.com

On the New York Herald’s 1 June 1897 report and the Journal’s “Mark Twain Amused” follow-up the next day.

About the author

The man who outlived his own obituary

Mark Twain

1835–1910 · American novelist, humorist and lecturer

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, was the most quotable American of his century and has been paying for it ever since — more spurious lines are pinned on him than on almost any other writer. He wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, lectured his way around the world to clear his debts after a publishing failure, and was living in seclusion in London in 1897 when American newspapers reported him dying. He died, genuinely, on 21 April 1910.

For writers & researchers

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Mark Twain, "Chapters from My Autobiography.—II," The North American Review, no. DXCIX (September 21, 1906): "Say the report is greatly exaggerated." Twain's 1897 note — "the report of my death was an exaggeration" — first published in the New York Journal, June 2, 1897; see Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated," June 7, 2024. The wording "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" is a later paraphrase, not Twain's.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/reports-of-my-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/

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