There Was a Young Lady Named Bright Whose Speed Was Far Faster Than Light
Not Albert Einstein — actually A. H. Reginald BullerA. H. Reginald Buller1874–1944 · British-Canadian mycologist and Professor of Botany, University of Manitoba
The verse ran unsigned under the title “Relativity” in the London humour magazine Punch on 19 December 1923, page 591. Buller was credited by name in the Manitoba Free Press in 1927 and claimed the limerick himself in a 1937 letter to The Observer; Einstein is the joke’s subject, not its author.
“There Was a Young Lady Named Bright Whose Speed Was Far Faster Than Light” There was a young lady named Bright / Whose speed was far faster than light; / She set out one day / In a relative way / And returned on the previous night. — “Relativity,” printed unsigned in Punch, 19 December 1923, p. 591; authorship claimed by A. H. Reginald Buller (1874–1944). Not Albert Einstein. Via Quotle.info
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Provenance
Where it actually comes from
Work
Relativity
First published
Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 165, 19 December 1923, p. 591, col. 1 — printed without attribution
Author
A. H. Reginald Buller, credited in the Manitoba Free Press on 13 April 1927 and claiming the verse in a letter to The Observer, 14 November 1937
Popularly credited to
Albert Einstein — whose theory the joke is about, not whose pen wrote it
Relativity.
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.
Unsigned in Punch, 1923
The verse as Punch printed it, under that title and with no byline. In his 1937 letter Buller gave his own original fifth line as “And returned home the previous night” — the single word home is the difference between the poet’s manuscript and the version the world memorised.
19 December 1923 — the limerick appears, unsigned, under the title “Relativity” on page 591 of Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 165. The University of Toronto’s Representative Poetry Online ↗ records the same citation and flags the printing as unattributed.
1925–1926 — the verse travels and collects owners. A Poughkeepsie paper prints it in February 1925 as a prize “silliness” tied to Einstein’s theory; by September 1926 the Cortland Standard and the Los Angeles Times are crediting the Bishop of Chelmsford. Quote Investigator logs both ↗
13 April 1927 — the Manitoba Free Press in Winnipeg prints the limerick and names Professor Buller as the man who had “just perpetrated” it. QI, citing the 13 April 1927 issue ↗
14 November 1937 — Buller writes to The Observer claiming the verse, describing how he composed it in a Birmingham garden and sent it to Punch, and confirming the publication date. Reference works have credited Buller ever since ↗
✓Public domain
The limerick was first published in Punch on 19 December 1923, well before the 1931 cut-off that governs US public-domain status, so the verse itself is free to quote and reprint. Buller died in 1944, but that does not change the status of a work already published in 1923.
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 has owned this limerick except its author
The verse is a joke about Einstein’s relativity, which is exactly why his name kept sticking to it. Because Punch ran it unsigned, it spent its first years being handed to whoever seemed plausible — and Buller lived long enough to complain about it in print.
✕
Modern quote sites, memes and social postsAlbert Einstein Most common today
Einstein is the reason the punchline works — the “relative way” is his special relativity — but he is the subject, not the author. Quote Investigator ↗ lists Einstein among the candidate names it tested and concludes Buller was the most likely composer. A 2015 Current Science survey makes the same point, noting the limerick first appeared anonymously in Punch and that Einstein’s name does not even appear in the verse ↗.
✕
American newspapers, September 1926The Bishop of Chelmsford 1926
The Cortland Standard of 15 September 1926 and the Los Angeles Times of 19 September 1926 both carried the verse in a short filler item headed “A Clerical Humorist,” stating that the Bishop of Chelmsford composed it — in a variant reading “Who would travel much faster than light.” Both citations are logged by Quote Investigator ↗.
✕
Circulating through the 1920s and 1930sThree bishops and “a well-known American authoress” Buller’s own complaint
Writing to The Observer in 1937, Buller noted that since publication he had seen the limerick “attributed to three bishops and to a well-known American authoress!” He signed the letter as Emeritus Professor of Botany, University of Manitoba. Quote Investigator reproduces the letter ↗.
✕
Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, February 1925An anonymous prize entry “based on the famous Mr. Einstein’s scientific theory” 1925
An early American printing framed it as a prize “silliness” from a booklet by the English publisher Jonathan Cape, tying it to Einstein’s theory but naming no author — and altering the second and third lines in the process. See QI’s 1925 citation ↗.
✓The wording people share is genuine — it is the exact text Punch printed on 19 December 1923 — but it belongs to A. H. Reginald Buller, a mycologist, not to Albert Einstein. Quote Investigator’s full chronology ↗
Context
Five minutes in a Birmingham garden
Buller told the story himself in 1937. He said he made the limerick while sitting in the garden of his friend and former colleague Dr. G. A. Shakespear, a lecturer on physics at the University of Birmingham. The two had been talking about Einstein’s theory, and Buller suggested that they each try to write a relativity limerick. About five minutes later they exchanged results — with, as he put it, nothing more than a trace of mutual admiration.
He later recited it at a scientific meeting, where it drew laughter and applause, and a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press told him it belonged in Punch. He sent it off, and six weeks later the editor mailed him a copy of the magazine with his limerick in it and an honorarium of a few shillings. Punch printed it unsigned — which is precisely how a joke about relativity got loose in the world with no owner, free to be handed to bishops, to a novelist, and eventually to Einstein.
“At the end of about five minutes the limericks were ready and were exchanged” — Buller, 1937
The fifth line, and the sequel
The last line has a wobble in it. Punch printed “And returned on the previous night”; the Manitoba Free Press version of 1927, and the text Buller called his original in 1937, both read “And returned home the previous night.” The version that won is the magazine’s, not the author’s. Quote Investigator prints both ↗.
Buller was not done with Miss Bright. A 2015 survey of Einstein limericks in Current Science reports, citing Goldsborough, that he wrote a sequel in 1943 in which the Bright one complains that her enormous speed increased her weight without making her any fatter — a joke about relativistic mass, from a man who spent his career on fungi. Current Science, 25 March 2015 ↗
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1874–1944 · British-Canadian mycologist and Professor of Botany
Arthur Henry Reginald Buller was born in Moseley, Birmingham on 19 August 1874 and died in Winnipeg on 3 July 1944. He was a mycologist — a specialist in fungi — who worked at the University of Birmingham before founding the Botany Department at the University of Manitoba, where he served as its first Professor of Botany and Geology until retiring in 1936. He also wrote limericks for Punch, and the one he dashed off about relativity has outlived every paper he published on spore discharge.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
“Relativity” [limerick]. Punch, or The London Charivari 165 (19 December 1923): 591, col. 1. Printed without attribution. Authorship claimed by A. H. Reginald Buller, “Relativity Limerick,” letter to the editor, The Observer (London), 14 November 1937, 12.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There Was a Young Lady Named Bright Whose Speed Was Far Faster Than Light’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-was-a-young-lady-named-bright-whose-speed-was-far/