Donald Wayne Foster raised arguments challenging whether the person traditionally identified as the author of a text was correct. He has pointed to an obscure Beat writer, Tom Hawkins, as the author of the Wanda Tinasky letters, which some had previously speculated to be the work of Thomas Pynchon. Foster also joined a long-running effort by descendants of Henry Livingston Jr. to show that their ancestor, and not Clement Clarke Moore, wrote the famous poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas". Foster provided his account of sleuthing out these and other identifications in his book "Author Unknown" (including the Shakespeare-"Elegy" connection, which he still
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem to his childhood home at Ottery and then went to visit William and Dorothy Wordsworth. It was during this time that Coleridge wrote "Fears in Solitude: Written in April 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion". The poem was included in a joint publication with William Wordsworth called "Lyrical Ballads", which first appeared in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry). Originally, Coleridge intended to place "Lewti or the Circassian Love-chaunt" in the collection. "The Nightingale" was published in seven other editions but was altered little. The poem begins with Milton's line in "Il Penseroso" about nightingales and then corrects it: The