Professor Stephen Nissenbaum and manuscript dealer Seth Kaller (who once owned one of the few extant copies of the poem in Clement Moore's handwriting) also argue forcefully for Moore. Stevenson ( Famous Single Poems and the Controversies Which Have Raged Around Them) and Samuel White Patterson ( The Poet of Christmas Eve) each presented both sides of this "intellectual property" dispute early on, but ultimately sided with Moore. In Author Unknown, Foster concludes that the evidence points decisively to Henry Livingston as the poem's true progenitor.īurton E.
The case for Livingston got another boost recently when Vassar professor Don Foster, at the behest of one of Henry's descendants, genealogist Mary Van Deusen, agreed to deploy "linguistic forensics" to help resolve the matter. Nicholas' with the acknowledged verses of Henry Livingston adds internal evidence supporting the correctness of the family's position." In 1919, the Dutchess County Historical Society wrote: "A critical comparison of the 'Visit from St. The controversy has never been definitively settled, though it's been raised periodically over the years. But by the turn of the century, members of the Livingston clan had begun to publicly insist that he was the one who had actually written it, citing family lore and other possible proofs. Henry Livingston, who died in 1828, just five years after the poem first appeared in the Troy newspaper, never claimed authorship either. In 1844, Moore included it in an anthology of his own, referring to it as his long-ago "trifle"-a thing he hadn't cared to acknowledge before, but would happily do so now.
In New-York Book of Poetry, in 1837, Charles Fenno Hoffman identified his friend Clement Moore as the author of this now widely circulated and beloved holiday poem. It appeared without attribution and continued to do so for the next fourteen years as it made its swift and merry way, like Santa's sleigh, all around the world. Nicholas" (also known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas") was originally published in the Troy Sentinel, on December 23, 1823.
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