George Stimpson

"Truth is stranger than fiction" is a popular condensation of a thought expressed in Lord Byron's Don Juan (1823):

'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange,—

Stranger than fiction.

Truth Stranger Than Fiction (1858) is the title of the autobiography of Josiah Henson, who was born a slave on a Maryland plantation and who was the reputed prototype of Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.