<

(Wednesday, June 2, 1897) — American writer Mark Twain, 61, was quoted today by the New York Journal as saying from London that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Twain, in London to cover Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee for the Journal, was responding to a report in the New York Herald that he was “grievously ill” and “possibly dying.”

Twain’s line is often misquoted as “the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.”