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| 12/23/1823 |
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Santa Anapests
On this day in 1823 the Christmas classic, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas") was published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel. Twenty years and much popularity later, Clement C. Moore claimed and was accorded authorship; recent scholarship by 'forensic' literary critic Don Foster has cast this very much in doubt. |
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Education-World.com
Find a short lesson plan titled "Moore vs. Livingston: Who Really Wrote 'The Night Before Christmas'?" |  | HistoryCooperative.org
Read an essay from the journal Common-Place titled "There Arose Such a Clatter Who Really Wrote 'The Night before Christmas'? (And Why Does It Matter?)," which defends Moore's authorship of the poem, and responds to the claims of Don Foster, as presented in Author Unknown.
"Having attacked Moore's personality, ideology, and parental style, in the end Foster challenges the man's personal integrity as well. In a way, he needs to do so, since Moore did, after all, eventually have 'The Night before Christmas' published under his own name, a circumstance that would seem to offer the most powerful evidence of his authorship. A man could be dour and child-hating without being a liar to boot--and a serious liar Moore must have been if he did not really write the poem...." | | The New York Times
Find a 2000 article titled "Literary Sleuth Casts Doubt on the Authorship of an Iconic Christmas Poem" which offers insight into the work of Don Foster (Author Unknown), the literary "forensic" scientist whose analysis of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" casts doubt on Moore's claim to authorship.
"The crux of Mr. Foster's case is in the literary roots of 'A Visit.' Whoever wrote it, Mr. Foster says, followed closely in the tradition of the 18th-century poets William King and Christopher Anstey. Both wrote popular, bawdy poems in an anapestic meter, with the accent on every third syllable. ... But Moore wrote only one undisputed anapestic poem, 'The Pig and the Rooster,' moralizing about laziness and arrogance. ... Henry Livingston, however, lifted frequently from such bawdy anapests, by Mr. Foster's analysis." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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