Famous Single Poems
descriptive of one of the visits of that good old Dutch Saint, St. Nicholas, and at the same time applied to our Albany neighbors for information as to the author. That information, we apprehend, the Albany editors cannot give. The lines were first published in this paper. They came to us from a manuscript in possession of a lady of this city. We have been given to understand that the author of them belongs, by birth and residence, to the city of New York, and that he is a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many more of more noisy pretensions.
No doubt, during the years which had intervened since the first appearance of the poem, Mr. Holley had been investigating the question of its authorship for himself; he had discovered the person who had originally sent the poem to him, had learned from her who the author was, and by this play upon words was endeavoring to indicate a name which he did not feel wholly at liberty to reveal.
The poem continued to be widely quoted during the next few years, always unsigned, but in 1837 a collection of verse called The New York Book of Poetry was published by George Dearborn. "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was one of the poems included, and the name of Clement C. Moore appears beneath its title as its author.
In 1844, Dr. Clement Clarke Moore, of
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