In your Victorian Christmases article, you cite without comment Clement Moore as the author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas”. Surely you know that modern scholars favor Henry Livingston. I’m not sure whether or not SD has the resources to solve the matter, but at least we should acknowledge the controversy.
Hi lcrocker,
That was a classic Article from 1992, so perhaps Cecil could be excused from the current debate as Clement Moore was still generally and publicly considered the author in 1992.
Do you have more details on Henry Livingston now being favored. The Straight Dope often adds updates to articles and they might in this case.
BTW: Welcome to Straight Dope, good to see a guest include the link to the article. Hope that means you’ll be around awhile.
Jim
The classic source is one of the chapters of “Author Unknown”, by Professor Don Foster. He usually does more serious work (Shakespeare, and so forth, with occasional FBI tasks), but the Livingston family asked him to look into the question. Basics:
Clement Clarke Moore never wrote anything else remotely like it.
His only other “Santa Claus” poem, in particular, isn’t remotely like it.
On at least one occasion, he is known to have accepted the credit for writing something that he hadn’t.
Henry Livingston, on the other hand, wrote dozens of poems in the same style.
The poem first appeared in print in upstate New York (Livingston’s turf), rather than the City (Moore’s).
Other evidence, so I’m told:
In the original publication, the reindeers’ names included Dunder & Blixem, Dutch words for thunder and lightning. Livingston was of Dutch descent. Moore wasn’t, and would have used the German spellings, Donder & Blitzen. When Moore later published the poem under his own name that is the spellings he used.
Santa smokes a pipe in the poem. Moore was very much an anti-smoking enthusiast, and wrote much on the evils of tobacco. It is unlikely, therefore, that he would have made Santa a smoker.