[PW] Famous Relativity Limerick - request 1937 article in The Observer UK

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Great thanks to Dan J. Bye who helped verify this citation with
extraordinary alacrity. Information on this topic will be shared on
the Quote Investigator blog in the near future, I hope.

With appreciation,
Garson O'Toole


On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 1:23 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      [PW] Famous Relativity Limerick - request 1937 article in The
>               Observer UK
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Perhaps a list reader would be kind enough to access "The Guardian /
> The Observer" digital archive (part of ProQuest) to retrieve a 1937
> letter-to-the-editor explaining the origin of the famous limerick on
> relativity described below. (Fred has an entry for this limerick in
> "The Yale Book of Quotations", and Nigel Rees has an entry in
> "Cassell's Humorous Quotations".)
>
> Here is the data for the citation which is supposed to include a
> letter from A. H. Reginald Buller in which he claimed authorship of
> the limerick.
>
> Newspaper: The Observer; Date: November 14, 1937; Page 12; Article
> Title: Letters to the Editor; Author: Wyatt, Isabel; (probably this is
> the author of the first letter in the section).
>
> You can locate this cite by searching for this phrase: "author of the
> relativity limerick" in database of "The Guardian / The Observer".
>
> Here is some additional background information. The relativity
> limerick first appeared in the London humor magazine "Punch" in 1923.
> It was published without attribution:
>
> [ref] 1923 December 19, “Punch, or The London Charivaria”, Volume 165,
> Relativity (Limerick), Quote Page 591, Column 1, London. (Verified on
> paper)[/ref]
>
> {Begin excerpt]
>
>              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.
>
> [End excerpt]
>
>
> In 1938 "The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada"
> reprinted a letter from A. H. Reginald Buller in which he explained
> the genesis and publication of the limerick. Below is the beginning of
> the letter. This is the text of the letter that I would like to verify
> was published in "The Observer" in 1937:
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> As the author of the relativity limerick, perhaps I may be allowed to
> say that the limerick was made by me about fifteen years ago while
> sitting in the garden of my friend and former colleague, Dr. G. A,
> Shakespear, Lecturer on Physics at the University of Birmingham.
>
> After conversing together on Einstein's theory, I suggested that we
> should each try to make a relativity limerick. At the end of about
> five minutes the limericks were ready and were exchanged, but with
> nothing more than a trace of mutual admiration.
>
> Some two years later, in 1923, at a meeting of the Scientific Club of
> Winnipeg, a paper on relativity was presented by a physicist …
> [End excerpt]
>
> Thank you very much for any help you can provide,
> Garson O'Toole
>
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