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
Clement Clarke Moore site, taking up most of the block between 20th and 21st streets and Ninth and Tenth avenues. Ten years later, Moore also gave land at 20th Street and Ninth, east of the avenue, to the diocese for construction of St. Peter's Episcopal Church. The contemporary Manhattan neighborhood is known as Chelsea after his estate. This poem, "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American", was first published anonymously in the Troy (NY) "Sentinel" on December 23, 1823. It was sent to the paper by a friend of Moore. It was reprinted frequently thereafter and published as a small book