MacDonald P. Jackson the New Zealand Academy of the Humanities (FNZAH). In 2009 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ). Jackson's most recent work was a year long examination of the disputed authorship of the classic poem "The Night Before Christmas", also called "A Visit from St. Nicholas." Jackson applied modern computational stylistics techniques to the corpora of verse left by both claimants, Clement Clarke Moore and Henry Livingston Jr., including a new test, statistical analysis of phonemes. His book, "Who Wrote" ""The Night Before Christmas"?" identifies the true author and makes a significant contribution to the
A Visit from St. Nicholas family lore gives credit to their forebear rather than Moore, but there is no proof that Livingston himself ever claimed authorship, nor has any record ever been found of any printing of the poem with Livingston's name attached to it, despite more than 40 years of searches. Advocates for Livingston's authorship argue that Moore "tried at first to disavow" the poem. They also posit that Moore falsely claimed to have translated a book. Document dealer and historian Seth Kaller has challenged both claims. Kaller examined the book in question, "A Complete Treatise on Merinos and Other Sheep", as well as