I recently made the effort to look up the primary source of this wonderful essay, only to find this widely-quoted essay—a star at GoodReads and Brainyquote etc—is very hard to find in its primary source. But I succeeded!

If anyone wants a 1st Edition copy of William Lyon Phelps “The Pleasure of Reading Books” – here it is: William Lyon Phelps, “A Private Library All Your Own,” Essays on Things New York: Macmillan Company (Sept, 1930) p.240-245.

The problem is it has been widely misattributed. It was originally published in 1930 in his book *Essays on Things* and the original title was “A Private Library All Your Own”.

“Historyplace.org” for example claims “On April 6, 1933, he delivered this speech during a radio broadcast” but doesn’t offer any proof. They also provide the wrong title, and only offer excerpts of the original (you may now compare them side-by-side).

But perhaps William Lyon Phelps did read it on the radio! If so, if anyone finds this archive, I would be glad to know if there was a record or—better yet—a recording. My hope is by posting this here anyone with better answers will reach out.

A special thank you to Moira Fitzgerald who helped me search William Lyon Phelps papers at the Beinecke Library and to Susan Gilroy at the Harvard Libraries, who has helped me innumerable times with this question and questions like these.