Gfyuki

Fairy tales and children's stories often end with some variation of "...and they lived happily ever after." I was wondering who first decided to use this wording, or when it was first written down.

The Phrase Finder is an excellent resource for phrase origins, but while someone posed this exact question in 2009, it doesn't seem to have an answer. So what was the first written instance of "happily ever after"?

Happily Ever After

Although I don't think it is sci-fi or fantasy, this expression appears in the 1702 English translation of the Italian Boccaccio's Il Decamerone, listed as the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest citation for the phrase:

Paganino, hearing the News, married the Widow, and as they were very well acquainted, so they lived very lovingly, and happily, ever after.

This seems to be from Day 2, Story 10.

Ever After(ward)

Something else worth mentioning is that the expression "ever after(ward)" has been used in English for a long time. The first instance I can find (via both the OED and the Middle English Dictionary) is from c1300, right in the middle—not the end—of The early South-English legendary; or, Lives of saints (also not actually sci-fi or fantasy):

þat maide was wel a-paid euere-aftur-ward

"that maid was well paid ever afterward"

Lived Ever After

Using the paywalled site Early English Books Online, I was able to find some examples of "lived ever after". Here's the earliest hit, from the middle of Here begynneth the treatys of Nycodemus gospell (1507; not sci-fi/fantasy):

And so they leuyd euer after in our lordys seruyce.

Notably, I was able to find a story that has it at the end. The story appears to be fiction, just not science fiction (or fantasy). It's The strange fortunes of two excellent princes in their liues and loues, to their equall ladies in all titles of true honour (1600):

... that the houses vnited in mariage, liued euer after in much loue, & the souldiers al commanded to laie by their Armes, after much feasting, and manie triumphes returned home with no little ioie.

FINIS.

Happy Ever After

I was also able to find some instances of "happy ever after" (also via EEBO), but they're always in the middle of the text (and it's all religious stuff, not sci-fi/fantasy). Here's A catholike exposition vpon the Reuelation of Sainct Iohn:

Moreouer Iohn had commended faith sufficiently when he sayde, that the dead whiche dye in the Lord are happie euer after.

Here's Eight sermons preached on several occasions by Nathanael Whaley (1675):

But suppose, it were possible for us to be discharged from this Obligation to a Life of Virtue and Religion, or that we might safely break it without drawing the displeasure of God upon us, yet since Heaven is Promised us upon this condition, that we live soberly, Righteously and Godly, for the little time we have to spend in this World, how is it Possible that we should refuse it, when we have the prospect of so glorious a Reward, and may be sure to be completely Happy ever after?

While it's not fantasy or science fiction, the earliest citation of that exact formula I've found is 1708 in Pierre Bayle's Miscellaneous Reflections, Occasion'd by the Comet which Appear'd in December 1680: Chiefly Tending to Explode Popular Superstitions. Written to a Doctor of the Sorbon:

'Twas confidently said, he who first laid hands on the Goddesses Image, was suddenly struck blind, and seiz'd with a Palsy in every Nerve. Augustus desiring to be satisfy'd of the Fact, was inform'd by an old Officer who fram'd the Story, not only that the Fellow was perfectly in good health, but had liv'd happily ever after on the Spoil of that Temple.

It may be worth noting that this is an English translation of a French work.

I suspect that the Grimm Brothers are the source. Their 1812 story of Rapunzel ends like this (translated from German)

He led her into his kingdom, where he was received with joy, and for a long time they lived happily and satisfied.

One of the earliest instances I can find of the actual phrase "Happily Ever After" was in a short story entitled that, from the 1920 book, Limbo, although that isn't a fairy tale.

Another possible answer for the source of the phrase is One Thousand and One Nights, which used a phrase indicating that the couple lived "happily ever after" albeit in a more morbid fashion, "They lived happily until there came to them the One who Destroys all Happiness," i.e. that they were happy until their eventual deaths. While the first English translation didn't arrive until the 1800s, the first French translation, of a 14th century manuscript, was released between 1707 and 1714 in twelve volumes.