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
Saint Nicholas tomb that could be visited serves as the almost solitary definitive proof that he was a real historical figure. In his treatise "De statu animarum post mortem" (written 583), the theologian Eustratius of Constantinople cites Saint Nicholas of Myra's miracle of the three counts as evidence that souls may work independent from the body. Eustratius credits a lost "Life of Saint Nicholas" as his source. Nearly all the sources Eustratius references date from the late fourth century to early fifth century, indicating the "Life of Saint Nicholas" to which he refers was probably written during this time period, shortly after