Not Ambrose Bierce — an anonymous 1899 newspaper jokeUnknown (an anonymous newspaper humorist)First printed 28 September 1899 · unsigned, credited only to the New York Journal
The gag was already circulating as unsigned newspaper filler in 1899 — “I think the covers are too far apart” — with no author attached. Ambrose Bierce’s name was not fastened to it until Irvin S. Cobb’s column of 13 February 1923, roughly a decade after Bierce vanished, and in a clumsier wording; Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the coiner was anonymous and the Bierce link is weak.
“The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart” Not Ambrose Bierce. The joke ran unsigned in the Logansport Pharos on 28 September 1899, credited only to the New York Journal; Bierce's name was attached in 1923, roughly a decade after he vanished, and no book was ever named. Source: Quote Investigator, quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/30/apart/
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Ambrose Bierce. 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 simplicity and creativity. Theme: "The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart". 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 "The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart". 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 1899 original
Earliest documented printing
“An Honest Criticism,” Logansport Pharos, Indiana, 28 September 1899, p. 6, col. 5 — unsigned
Credit line
the New York Journal; a November 1899 reprint in the Duluth Evening Herald credited the San Francisco Examiner instead
First tied to Bierce
Irvin S. Cobb, “My Favorite Stories: Some Lessons in Letter Writing,” Boston Globe, 13 February 1923, p. 16
Modern wording in print by
Wilson Follett, “Ambrose Bierce: An Analysis of the Perverse Wit that Shaped His Work,” The Bookman, November 1928
An Honest Criticism.
Author—Now I want your honest opinion. Tell me what faults you see in my book. Friend—Well, for one thing, I think the covers are too far apart.—New York Journal.
Logansport Pharos, 28 Sep 1899
This is the ancestor, not the famous sentence: a stock “Author and Friend” dialogue running as unsigned exchange filler, transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from the Logansport Pharos of 28 September 1899. The same item ran in papers in Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi and Minnesota that autumn, always without an author.
The joke predates the name.Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest printing to an unsigned humour item headed “An Honest Criticism” in the Logansport Pharos of Indiana on 28 September 1899, which credited only the New York Journal. The same dialogue ran in at least four other papers before the year was out. By 1905 a variant with stock figures “Scribbles” and “Criticus” was in circulation: “The covers are entirely too far apart.”
Bierce enters in 1923, and clumsily. The first source connecting him to the joke is a syndicated column by the humorist Irvin S. Cobb in the Boston Globe of 13 February 1923, which has Bierce telling a young Californian: “The main criticism which I would offer is that the covers of this volume are entirely too far apart.” QI ↗ notes this was described as private feedback, not a published review, and that it appeared roughly a decade after Bierce disappeared in 1913.
Then it hardened into fact. Robert H. Davis, in an introduction dated 8 December 1924 to a volume of The Work of Stephen Crane, called it Bierce’s “classic single-line review”; Wilson Follett’s November 1928 essay in The Bookman called it his “celebrated newspaper review”; and per QI ↗, C. Hartley Grattan repeated it the following year in Bitter Bierce: A Mystery of American Letters ↗ (Doubleday, Doran, 1929). No book, publication or date for the supposed review has ever been produced.
Wikiquote never let it through. The line is absent from the sourced Ambrose Bierce page ↗; it sits instead on the talk page ↗, in the unsourced list, tagged only “From an editorial book review.”
✓Public domain
Every documented appearance of this line is in pre-1931 American print and is therefore in the public domain in the United States: the unsigned Logansport Pharos item of 28 September 1899, and the exact modern wording in Wilson Follett’s November 1928 essay in The Bookman. There is no rights holder to identify, because no author has ever been identified — the earliest printings carry no byline at all.
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
A joke in search of an owner
This line has been credited to at least four different people, which is the strongest single argument that it belongs to none of them. Here is where each claim came from.
✕
the standard creditAmbrose Bierce Unsourced
First linked to Bierce by the humorist Irvin S. Cobb in a syndicated column carried by the Boston Globe on 13 February 1923 — roughly a decade after Bierce vanished — and in a longer form: “The main criticism which I would offer is that the covers of this volume are entirely too far apart.” Cobb described it as a private judgement handed to a young Californian, not a published review. Quote Investigator ↗ calls this the earliest evidence it has found tying Bierce to the joke, and rates the linkage weak.
✕
a 1934 retellingAlan Le May Swapped in
A columnist in the San Diego Evening Tribune in 1934 told the identical anecdote — a writer asks for criticism in one sentence — but cast the novelist and screenwriter Alan Le May in Bierce’s role, per Quote Investigator ↗.
✕
a 1952 joke bookJack Benny Swapped in
The comedian Joey Adams printed it as Benny’s: “Your book is fine. The only trouble is the covers are too far apart” — documented by QI ↗.
✕
the usual last stopMark Twain Quote magnet
By 1953 an Ohio newspaper was calling it “Mark Twain’s famous book review” — the standard endpoint for any orphaned American witticism, and recorded in QI’s chronology ↗.
✓Nobody knows who wrote it. The earliest printing anyone has found ran unsigned on 28 September 1899, and Quote Investigator’s conclusion ↗ is that the coiner was anonymous, no specific book was ever named, and the support for Bierce is weak because the attributions only appeared many years after his disappearance.
Context
Why this one stuck to Bierce
It is the perfect Bierce quote, which is the problem. A one-line review that destroys a book without discussing it is precisely the move Bierce was famous for, so when a floating anonymous gag needed an owner, his was the obvious name — and by the late 1920s writers were describing it not as a joke but as a documented event. Wilson Follett called it Bierce’s “celebrated newspaper review” in The Bookman in November 1928; a California critic told a librarians’ meeting in January 1929 that Bierce had written it about a slender volume of verse; C. Hartley Grattan folded it into his 1929 biography Bitter Bierce. None of them produced the review, the book, or the date.
The tell is that the joke does not stay put. Once it was a good anecdote it could be told about anybody: Quote Investigator ↗ tracks it onto the novelist Alan Le May in 1934, onto Jack Benny in a 1952 joke book, and onto Mark Twain in an Ohio paper in 1953. A line with a real author does not migrate like that. A stock gag from the exchange columns does.
“Well, for one thing, I think the covers are too far apart.” — unsigned, 1899
One coincidence, and why it proves nothing
There is a detail that looks like a clue and is not. When the joke was reprinted in the Duluth Evening Herald in November 1899, the paper credited the San Francisco Examiner — the Hearst daily where Bierce had been one of the first regular columnists. It is tempting. It is also worthless as evidence: unsigned humour items were exchange filler, lifted from paper to paper with whatever credit line came attached, and the Logansport Pharos printing six weeks earlier credited the New York Journal instead. Quote Investigator, which records both credit lines, still concludes the coiner was anonymous.
Wikiquote’s editors reached the same place independently. The line is not on the sourced Ambrose Bierce page at all; it sits on the talk page in the unsourced list, carrying nothing but the vague note that it came “from an editorial book review.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1842 – c. 1914 · American satirist, critic & short-story writer
Ambrose Bierce was one of the most feared literary critics in America and one of the first regular columnists on William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner — which is exactly why a homeless piece of literary cruelty drifted onto his name. His documented work is savage enough without help: The Devil’s Dictionary, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, and the Civil War stories of Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. His last known letter was written from Chihuahua, Mexico, on 26 December 1913; he was never heard from again, and the one-line book review that became his most-shared quotation was pinned on him a decade after he could no longer disown it.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented printing
“An Honest Criticism,” Logansport Pharos (Logansport, Indiana), September 28, 1899, p. 6, col. 5 — unsigned, credited to the New York Journal. Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart,” January 30, 2014. The first source linking the joke to Ambrose Bierce is Irvin S. Cobb, “My Favorite Stories: Some Lessons in Letter Writing,” Boston Globe, February 13, 1923, p. 16, col. 7.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Covers of This Book Are Too Far Apart’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-covers-of-this-book-are-too-far-apart/