Friday, December 23, 2011

The Night Before Christmas ...???




Clement Clarke Moore probably didn't write it  (just like Shakespeare probably didn't write all those plays).  Literary sleuth Donald Foster investigated the Christmas poem and decided that Moore was lying. Foster found out that it was first published as "A Visit From St. Nicholas," probably by an amateur poet named Henry Livingston, Jr. of Poughkeepsie, NY in a newspaper in Troy, NY, in 1825.

Foster believes the style and cultural references are from Livingston (certainly not Moore), plus Moore didn't lay claim to the poem until 1844--after Livingston was dead--and a full 19 years after it first appeared in the Troy newspaper. Moore even asked the Troy paper if anyone remembered who wrote the poem. The Troy paper answered that anyone who knew was probably long gone.

And like Shakespeare, the identity of the creator is wrong. To find out who wrote the Shakespeare plays and poems, read my essay The Masque of William Shakespeare on Amazon Kindle or Smashwords . Learn who really wrote the plays and why.



**Click either of the last two links to read an excerpt.**

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