Mark Twain quashed a false death report in 1897 with the line, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
The episode occurred while Twain was in London. Newspapers had confused him with his cousin, James Ross Clemens, who had been seriously ill. A New York Journal correspondent contacted Twain, who explained in writing that the report of his illness had grown out of his cousin’s illness—and that the death report was exaggerated.
The statement was published in the New York Journal on June 2, 1897. Twain’s original wording is often replaced by the more familiar “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” but that popular version is a later variant rather than the wording of the 1897 report. Twain himself later recalled the incident in somewhat different language, helping the altered version spread.