Search the Site

Quotes Uncovered: Giving Richard Lewis Credit

I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
Marcus Brute asked:

How about “the _____ from Hell” (e.g. “the mother-in-law from Hell”)? Was Richard Lewis really the first to use the expression?

An episode of the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm focused on Richard Lewis’s obsession with convincing Bartlett’s Quotations that he was the originator of this expression. Bartlett’s answered him with some lame excuse for failing to recognize him as such. The Yale Book of Quotations, however, has the following entry under Lewis’s name:

[Self-description:] Comedian from hell.
Quoted in Chicago Tribune, Apr. 20, 1986. Earliest documented example of the expression “from hell” referring to a person.

Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?


Comments