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- According to legend,
Clement Clarke Moore wrote his immortal
poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The
Night Before Christmas, for his family on Christmas Eve 1822.
He never intended that it be published, but a family friend,
Miss Harriet Butler, learned of the poem sometime later from
Moore's children. She copied it into her album, and submitted
it to the editor of the Troy
(New York) Sentinel where it made its first appearance
in print on December 23, 1823. Soon, the poem began to be reprinted
in other newspapers, almanacs and magazines, with the first appearance
in a book in The New
York Book of Poetry, edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman,
in 1837.
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- It was not until 1844, however, that Moore himself acknowledged
authorship in a volume of his poetry entitled Poems,
published at the request of his children. One hundred and eighty
years later it is the most-published, most-read, most-memorized
and most-collected book in all of Christmas literature.
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