"Murphy's Law" (1955)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:11:38 -0400, Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> "Murphy's Law was first formulated by Samuel Beckett in his novel
>> named, of course, _Murphy_, which was first published in 1938.
>
>This would be great if it were true, but the assertion is bogus.

Indeed, as a thorough search on the text will attest...

http://print.google.com/print?id=UgKtnT3Py9oC

Mark Brader of alt.usage.english also read _Murphy_ and corroborates that
nothing resembling "Murphy's Law" appears in the book:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/msg/af520b1700808a98

Surprising that Dickson didn't try to verify the claim before publishing it.


--Ben Zimmer