Clement Clarke Moore was born on June 15, 1779 in New York City. His father was the president of Columbia College, which is where Clement Moore graduated with a masters degree in 1801. He was a professor of classics at the General Theological Seminary in New York; his most famous scholarly work was A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language. In an apparently lighthearted moment, he wrote "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" as a Christmas gift for his children in 1822. The story goes that he composed the poem while taking a sleigh ride, but considered it "a mere trifle." Everyone who read it liked it immensely, but Moore wouldn't budge. He wouldn't acknowledge authorship until fifteen years later when he included the poem in a volume of his collected works. Fortunately, a relative sent the poem to an out-of-town newspaper, which published it to great acclaim the year after it was written. Don Foster, currently a professor at Vassar College, recently published a book that casts doubt on the poem being written by Moore. Foster's book, entitled Author Unknown (Henry Holt), supports the theory that it was actually written by Henry Livingston, Jr., a poet from Poughkeepsie, who died before Moore was acknowledged as the author. Clement Clarke Moore died in 1863.
