Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In Reading It

Not Benjamin Disraeli — an anonymous Victorian joke Unknown (an unnamed Victorian botanist) First printed 1871 · credited to no one by name
Disputed Free to reuse

The quip was already circulating in 1871, when The British Quarterly Review credited it to an unnamed “celebrated botanist” in an essay on letter-writing. Disraeli’s name was attached to it only in 1898, seventeen years after his death, and his own biographer Wilfrid Meynell printed it in 1903 while conceding the evidence for it was thin and offering no source.

Last verified 7 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In Reading It” Not Benjamin Disraeli. An anonymous joke, first printed in The British Quarterly Review, vol. 54 (1871), credited only to "a celebrated botanist"; attached to Disraeli in print from 1898, seventeen years after his death. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “I have received your book, and shall lose no time in reading it.”

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

Can you use it?

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

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of truth and knowledge. Theme: "Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In 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.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In 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

The paper trail, 1871–1903

Earliest known printing
“Letters and Letter Writing,” Art. V, The British Quarterly Review, vol. 54
Date
1871 (Quote Investigator cites the issue of 1 October 1871)
Credited to
“A celebrated botanist” — no name given
First linked to Disraeli
New York Times, 9 July 1898; printed with a disclaimer in Meynell’s biography, 1903

A celebrated botanist used to return thanks somewhat in the following form:—‘I have received your book, and shall lose no time in reading it.’ The unfortunate author might put his own construction on this rather ambiguous language. Earliest known printing, 1871

The 1871 printing arrives already anonymous — the joke is presented as a habit of an unnamed man, not as a remark anyone can date or verify.

Digitised 1903 biography
Meynell, page 135 — where Disraeli gets the credit, and loses it in the next sentence
The British Quarterly Review, Vol. LIV (July and October 1871) at Project Gutenberg

How an anonymous joke became a Disraeli quote

  • 1871 — the joke, with no owner. An essay on letters and letter-writing in The British Quarterly Review attributes the formula to “a celebrated botanist” and leaves him unnamed. This is the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator. Read the volume ↗
  • 1898 — Disraeli’s name arrives. Quote Investigator documents a New York Times piece of 9 July 1898 saying Lord Beaconsfield had “a kind of stereotyped form of acknowledgment” to the effect that he “would lose no time in reading them.” That is twenty-seven years after the first printing and seventeen years after Disraeli’s death in 1881. Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1903 — his biographer prints it, and hedges. Wilfrid Meynell’s Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography gives it on page 135 as a reply “to an author, presenting an impossible book,” then judges that the ambiguity “fathered upon Disraeli, might very well be his” while allowing that there is “as little evidence of the paternity as that which sometimes satisfies a magistrate of sentiment” — an endorsement resting on thin evidence, not a source. See page 135 ↗
  • Today — still unsourced. Wikiquote keeps the line in the Unsourced list on its Disraeli talk page, citing Meynell’s “it might very well be his” and noting the same quip has been fathered on Heinrich Heine, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Wikiquote ↗
Public domain

Both documented printings are long out of copyright: The British Quarterly Review of 1871 and Wilfrid Meynell’s Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography of 1903 were published well before 1931 and are public domain in the United States. The sentence itself is anonymous, so no author or estate has ever held a claim to 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

Everyone it has been pinned on

Over roughly 140 years the same two-line joke has been handed to at least seven named people, none of whom left a letter containing it. Quote Investigator’s chronology dates each handover.

Benjamin Disraeli 1898

The New York Times gave it to Lord Beaconsfield in 1898, and Wilfrid Meynell put it in his 1903 biography under “Of Men and Books” — where he judged that the ambiguity “fathered upon Disraeli, might very well be his,” while allowing in the same breath that there is “as little evidence of the paternity as that which sometimes satisfies a magistrate of sentiment.” An endorsement resting on thin evidence, not a source. Meynell, page 135 ↗

William Gladstone 1897

A New Zealand paper ran it as Gladstone’s acknowledgment a year before the Times gave it to Disraeli — the joke was simply being fitted to whichever statesman was in the reader’s mind. Quote Investigator ↗

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce 1894

The earliest attachment to a specific person that Quote Investigator found is in Rhoda Broughton’s 1894 novel A Beginner, where it is recalled as the bishop’s “masterly acknowledgment of a presentation copy.” A novel is not evidence. Quote Investigator ↗

Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. 1900 & 1902

Newspapers gave the same anecdote to the poet-editor Aldrich in 1900 — there an ambitious young author and a volume of forbidding length — and to “Dr. Holmes” in 1902, where it is a self-satisfied author sending a complimentary copy. Quote Investigator ↗

William Makepeace Thackeray 1931

A Massachusetts newspaper column handed the joke to Thackeray in 1931, half a century after Disraeli’s death and sixty years after its first known printing. Quote Investigator ↗

Moses Hadas 1982

The variant “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I’ll waste no time reading it” was printed in a 1982 quotation collection and credited to the classical scholar Moses Hadas “in a letter” — no such letter has been produced. Quote Investigator ↗

The earliest instance located by Quote Investigator, in 1871, credits nobody by name — just “a celebrated botanist” — and QI reports it has seen no direct evidence, meaning no letter from any prominent individual containing the joke. Its hypothesis is that the phrase was rarely actually sent, and lived mainly in comic anecdotes. Read the full chronology ↗

Context

A joke that kept changing owners

The line works because it is a trap dressed as a courtesy. “I shall lose no time in reading it” can mean I will start at once or I will not spend a second on it, and the author holding the letter has no way to tell which. Victorian periodicals loved it precisely for that: it was a printable way to be rude in public.

That is also why it has no author. When The British Quarterly Review ran it in 1871 it belonged to “a celebrated botanist” whose name nobody bothered to give; by 1883 Nature was calling it a “well-known formula” and a travel writer called it “the old equivoque,” meaning it was already old furniture. A joke that generic needs a famous face, and over the next half-century it was fitted with several — Wilberforce, Gladstone, Disraeli, Aldrich, Holmes, Thackeray, and eventually the classicist Moses Hadas.

By 1883 it was already being called “the old equivoque” — a joke too well worn to belong to anyone.

How the joke travelled, in print

1871 — The British Quarterly Review, in an essay on letters and letter-writing, gives it to “a celebrated botanist,” unnamed. This is the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator ↗.

1883–1890 — Quote Investigator documents it as a stock joke rather than anyone’s remark: called “the old equivoque” in J. Fox Turner’s There and Back, a “well-known formula” in Nature, and finally listed in Punch’s “Dictionary of Phrases” in May 1890 with the gloss “No; not a single second.” See the citations ↗

1894 onward — the famous names arrive: Samuel Wilberforce (1894), Gladstone (1897), Disraeli (1898), Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1900), Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1902), Thackeray (1931), Moses Hadas (1982, in the “waste no time” wording). Collector Victor Steinbok’s antedating thread on the American Dialect Society list gathers several of the same finds. ADS-L, May 2010 ↗

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Knowledge

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: Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In Reading Itquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology: seven named claimants, earliest printing 1871, and the conclusion that no direct evidence exists for any of them.
The British Quarterly Review, Vol. LIV (July and October 1871)gutenberg.org

Full text of the volume whose essay on letter-writing carries the earliest known printing of the joke.
Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography, vol. 1 (1903)archive.org

Wilfrid Meynell's biography — page 135 prints the line and immediately concedes the attribution is unproven.
Talk:Benjamin Disraelien.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote keeps the line in its Unsourced list, noting Meynell's hedge and that it has also been fathered on Heine, Shaw and Churchill.
ADS-L: "I shall lose no time in reading it" — antedating (1871)listserv.linguistlist.org

American Dialect Society mailing-list thread gathering 19th-century printings and rival attributions.
Benjamin Disraelien.wikipedia.org

Biography of the statesman and novelist the joke was eventually pinned on (1804–1881).

The man the joke was pinned on

Why it stuck to Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli

1804–1881 · British Prime Minister, novelist & 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and novelist who served twice as Prime Minister — briefly in 1868, then from 1874 to 1880 — and was made 1st Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876. He was a working author as well as a politician, which made him a plausible magnet for any joke about being sent unwanted books by hopeful writers. That plausibility is exactly why the line stuck to him: it sounds like Disraeli, but no letter or manuscript in his hand has ever been produced containing it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Earliest documented in “Letters and Letter Writing,” Art. V, The British Quarterly Review, vol. 54 (July and October 1871), where the quip is credited only to “a celebrated botanist.” The earliest attribution to Disraeli documented by Quote Investigator is the New York Times, 9 July 1898; the line appears, with an explicit disclaimer, in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography, vol. 1 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1903), 135.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Thank You for the Gift Book. I Shall Lose No Time In Reading It’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/thank-you-for-the-gift-book-i-shall-lose-no-time-in-reading/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied