Quote: I shall lose no time in reading it: antedating (1871) (Gladstone 1897) (Disraeli 1898)

[Shapiro, Fred]

Garson,

Thanks for this splendid research.  Maybe you would be interested in the similar quote, "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter.  Some day I intend reading it."  This is said to have been a blurb by Groucho Marx on the dust jacket for S. J. Perelman, Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge (1929).  In my research for the Yale Book of Quotations, the earliest record I found of this was in Show Magazine, Nov. 1961.  Can you (or any other ADS-Ler) find earlier evidence than that?

Fred Shapiro

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