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

Who really said it

There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel

Not Oscar Wilde — credited to W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham 1874–1965 · English novelist, playwright and short-story writer
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Oscar Wilde did have a “three rules” joke, but it was about plays, not novels — a dig at the dramatist Henry Arthur Jones. The novel version is credited to Maugham in Ralph Daigh’s 1977 book Maybe You Should Write a Book, twelve years after Maugham died, and Quote Investigator ↗ has found nothing earlier.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel” not Oscar Wilde. Credited to W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965); the earliest known printing is Ralph Daigh, Maybe You Should Write a Book (Prentice-Hall, 1977), p. 7, which itself reports it secondhand. Wilde's genuine “three rules” joke was about playwriting. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “There are three rules for the writing of a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.”

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

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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

In context

Evoking the world of W. Somerset Maugham — English novelist, playwright and short-story writer. Theme: "There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel". 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 "There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel". 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 the line actually comes from

Earliest documented printing
Maybe You Should Write a Book
Author & year
Ralph Daigh · Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977 · quote page 7
Form
A secondhand anecdote — Maugham quoted from an unrecorded talk to a friend’s literature class
Wilde’s actual version
About plays, not novels — printed 1930 and 1946

Somerset Maugham is credited with summing it all up when in addressing a friend’s class on English literature he was asked by a student how to write a novel. Maugham’s answer was: “There are three rules for the writing of a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.” Secondhand, 1977

As transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from Ralph Daigh’s Maybe You Should Write a Book (1977), page 7. Note the hedge in the earliest source itself: Daigh writes that Maugham “is credited with” the line, not that he is recorded saying it.

Quote Investigator: Quote Origin: There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel

How we verified this

  • 1930 and 1946 — Wilde’s real version, and it is about plays. Doris Arthur Jones printed the barb in her 1930 biography of her father, the dramatist Henry Arthur Jones, who by Quote Investigator’s account apparently repeated it himself; Hesketh Pearson gives it as “There are three rules for writing plays. The first rule is not to write like Henry Arthur Jones; the second and third rules are the same.” Read the passage in Pearson ↗
  • 1977 — the novel version reaches print for the first time. Ralph Daigh’s Maybe You Should Write a Book credits Maugham with the quip; it is the earliest instance Quote Investigator located ↗, twelve years after Maugham’s death in 1965.
  • 1980 — the wording is smoothed and the quote goes wide. The Quotable Quotations Book reprinted it from Daigh, and a Los Angeles Times review that April trimmed “the writing of a novel” to “writing a novel” — the form that dominates today. Chronology at Quote Investigator ↗
  • No Wilde source has ever surfaced. Wilde died in 1900, and the novel line appears in none of the sourced, attributed, disputed or misattributed sections of Wikiquote’s Oscar Wilde page ↗.

The wording cannot be tied to any pre-1931 work, so no public-domain status can be asserted. Its earliest documented appearance is Ralph Daigh’s Maybe You Should Write a Book (1977), a book still in copyright — and even there the sentence is reported as remembered speech rather than quoted from anything Maugham published.

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

Three jokes, three claimants

This is a tangle of related jokes, and Oscar Wilde is genuinely mixed up in it — just not in this one.

Oscar Wilde Not his

Wilde died in 1900 and no source places this line in his writing or recorded talk; it appears nowhere on Wikiquote’s Oscar Wilde page ↗, sourced or otherwise. The confusion is understandable, because Wilde really did make a “three rules” joke — about playwriting.

Oscar Wilde Credible

“There are three rules for writing plays. The first rule is not to write like Henry Arthur Jones; the second and third rules are the same.” The barb was printed in 1930 by Doris Arthur Jones in a biography of her father, and again by Hesketh Pearson in 1946 — read it in Pearson’s text ↗. Quote Investigator calls the provenance uncertain but the assignment to Wilde credible.

Mark Twain Probably Bret Harte

The version whose three rules are all just “write” was pinned on Twain from 1916, six years after his death. Quote Investigator reports an earlier 1915 telling in which Bret Harte snaps at a young writer, “for pity’s sake, don’t read anything! Just write! Write! Write!”, and concludes it belongs to Harte rather than Twain ↗.

W. Somerset Maugham Leading candidate

Maugham is the name the quote has carried since 1977, and Quote Investigator calls him the leading candidate — but flags that the documentation “is not ideal,” since the first printing comes twelve years after his death and reports the remark as classroom hearsay. See the chronology ↗

The novel line is Maugham’s by tradition, not by document: the earliest print record is a 1977 anecdote book ↗. Wilde’s three-rules joke is real — and it is about plays.

Context

Why the joke keeps changing owners

The gag survives because it is a perfect refusal. Ask a novelist how to write a novel and you are asking for a formula that does not exist; the three-rules structure concedes the question’s premise and then pulls the floor out. The shape is older than any of its famous claimants — Quote Investigator ↗ flags an 1866 antecedent in Notes and Queries, about a game called Bumblepuppy whose rules you must invent yourself, “for I believe no one knows what they are.”

And it is endlessly portable. QI logs the same joke retooled for show business (1980), teaching (1982), party politics (1985), landing an aeroplane (1993) and making a film (2008). A line that travels that easily does not stay attached to whoever first said it — which is how a Maugham quip ends up wearing Oscar Wilde’s name.

Even the earliest source hedges. Daigh does not say Maugham said it — he says Maugham “is credited with” saying it.

Why Wilde attracts other people’s jokes

Wilde is one of the most reliable false bylines in circulation: an ownerless epigram drifts toward the most famous available wit, and Wilde was famous precisely for epigrams. Here the drift had extra help — he owns a real, documented “three rules” joke, so the novel version slots into a shape that already fits him.

The test that separates the two is the one this page applies throughout. For the playwriting version there are two named biographers printing it, in 1930 and 1946, and the target of the joke apparently repeated it himself. For the novel version there is a single anecdote book from 1977 and nothing behind it.

Explore

Filed under

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

Creativity Work Doubt

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: There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novelquoteinvestigator.com

The full chronology: the 1977 Daigh anecdote, Wilde’s playwriting version, the Twain/Harte tangle, and every later variant.
Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde — full textarchive.org

Searchable scan of the Methuen edition containing Wilde’s actual three-rules remark about Henry Arthur Jones.
Oscar Wilde, His Life and Wit (1946)archive.org

The Harper & Brothers edition Quote Investigator cites at page 196 for the playwriting quip.
W. Somerset Maughamen.wikiquote.org

Maugham’s sourced quotations and life dates — this line is not among them.
Oscar Wildeen.wikiquote.org

Wilde’s sourced, attributed, disputed and misattributed quotations; the novel line appears in none of them.
Maybe You Should Write a Book (1977)openlibrary.org

Catalogue record for Ralph Daigh’s book, the earliest known printing of the quip.

The likely author

Who was W. Somerset Maugham?

W. Somerset Maugham

1874–1965 · English novelist, playwright and short-story writer

Born in Paris in 1874, Maugham became one of the most widely read English writers of his era, in fiction and on the stage — Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor’s Edge (1944). He was also unusually candid about writing: The Summing Up (1938) is a book-length reckoning with his own craft and literary standing. He died at Nice in 1965, aged 91.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Earliest documented in Ralph Daigh, Maybe You Should Write a Book (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 7, where the remark is credited to W. Somerset Maugham. Wilde's related quip about playwriting appears in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), 196.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-are-three-rules-for-the-writing-of-a-novel/

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