This quote about family happiness is often attributed to the Irish playwright. We checked to see if Shaw is actually the author of this phrase.

The quote “A happy family is an early paradise” can be found in many collections aphorisms, blogs And publications on social networks with attribution to George Bernard Shaw. On the platform "Zen” she is repeatedly mentioned as saying Shaw. This phrase has become popular and is often used in context discussions family values and happiness. Many English-language sources also attributed to The authorship of this quote is to the famous Irishman.

Translated into Russian, the phrase attributed to the playwright appears in several variations: “A happy family is an early heaven”, “A happy family is a rehearsal for heaven”, “A happy family is an early heaven”, and in the original it sounds like “A happy family is but an earlier heaven”. When studying the most complete collected works The Verified show was unable to find this quote in any of its published works. Appeal to scientific research of his works and meetings his statements also does not confirm the authorship of the famous playwright. There is no similar quotation in “A Treatise on Parents and Children,” Shaw’s essay on the family.

According to portal research Quote Investigator, the earliest mention of this quote can be found in a church hymnal Hymns for Public and Private Worship ("Hymns for Public and Private Worship"), compiled by John R. Bird and published in 1837. It contains a hymn called Home Joys, which was credited as being written by Sir John Bowring. This hymn contained the following lines:

"A glance of heaven to see,
To none on earth is given;
And yet - a happy family
Is but an earlier heaven."

These lines can be translated as:

"Look at the heavens
It is not given to anyone on earth;
And yet - a happy family
There is nothing less than an early paradise.”

John Bowring (1792–1872) was a British politician, diplomat, linguist and man of letters. He served as Governor of Hong Kong (1854–1859) and was a Member of the British Parliament. Bowring claimed, that he spoke 200 languages and could speak 100 of them, which helped him in his diplomatic career and in compiling translations of European poetry. Bowring wrote 88 hymns, some of which are still are used in many churches.

J. King. Portrait of Sir John Bowring (1826). National Portrait Gallery, UK. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1841, Bowring published the third edition of his Morning and Evening Prayers: with Hymns and Occasional Prayers, which also included turned on the hymn "Home Joys", containing a quotation that was later erroneously attributed to Bernard Shaw.

It is curious that the reason for the confusion could be the location of quotations in the collections of aphorisms. For example, in the collection Instant Quotation Dictionary 1974, two quotes about family were placed side by side: “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in the closet, make it dance” by George Bernard Shaw and “A happy family is an early paradise” by John Bowring.

The same juxtaposition of quotations was observed in other collections, for example in the book Reader's Digest Quotable Quotes 1997. Readers probably accidentally transferred authorship from one phrase to another when quoting.

The quote about a happy family began to be attributed to Shaw in Russian-language blogs. One of the earliest misattributed posts we found was a post with the headline “30+ Great Quotes About Family", published on the Zen platform on December 9, 2019.

Thus, the quote “A happy family is an early paradise” does not belong to Bernard Shaw, but to Sir John Bowring and comes from a hymn he wrote in the first half of the 19th century. Attributing these words to Shaw became a common error, which seems to have arisen from the close proximity of the quotations in popular collections of aphorisms, and continues to be replicated in various sources to this day.

Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons