A Visit from St. Nicholas my children," Moore claimed the Christmas poem in this 1844 letter as his "literary property, however small the intrinsic value of that property may be." "A Visit from St. Nicholas" appears on pages 124-127 in Moore's volume of collected Poems (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1844). Before 1844, the poem was included in two 1840 anthologies: attributed to "Clement C. Moore" in Selections from The American Poets, edited by William Cullen Bryant (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840), pages 285-286; and to "C. C. Moore" in the first volume of The Poets of America, edited by John Keese (New York:
Clement Clarke Moore in illustrated versions. It was not until 1837, in "The New-York Book of Poetry" (edited by Charles Fenno Hoffmann), that the poem was first attributed in print to Moore. Moore claimed authorship by including it in his "Poems," an 1844 anthology of his works. His children, for whom he had originally written the piece, encouraged this publication. At first Moore had not wished to be connected with the popular verse, given his public reputation as a professor of ancient languages. By then, the original publisher and at least seven others had already acknowledged him as author. Moore was said to