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Lot Details
Lot 123
MOORE, CLEMENT C.[LARKE] Poems.
New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1844. First edition, containing the first appearance of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" in a collection of Moore's own work. Period brown morocco gilt, the upper cover lettered "Eliza A. Nevin," all edges gilt. 7 x 4 1/2 inches (17.5 x 11.5 cm); i-[xiv], 15-216 pp. "A Visit from St. Nicholas" appears on pp. 124-7. Some wear to binding, occasional marginal finger soil, faint damp stain on final leaf and endpaper.
This collection of poems was, as mentioned in the preface, published at the behest of his surviving children; it includes two poems written by his wife (who had died in 1830), and his "To Southey," which he wrote upon his bereavement. However, the principal claim to fame of this work rests upon Moore's immortal Christmas poem. This was written for his children in 1822 as a Christmas gift, and found its way into print in the Troy Sentinel, where it was anonymously published on December 23, 1823. A separate broadside printing appeared in about 1830, and the verse appeared under Moore's own name in the The New York Book of Poetry of 1837. The Grolier Club's One hundred influential American books printed before 1900, 152 notes "...Santa Claus as we (and the world, for that matter) now know him is almost one hundred percent American. Not until St. Nicholas passed through the crucible of Doctor Clement Clarke Moore's mind and imagination did the patron saint of childhood ever ride in a sleigh, or have eight tiny reindeer with bells joyfully to convey him. Nor was he dressed in furs, nor did he smoke a pipe, nor did he ever get into the homes of good little boys and girls by going down chimneys." BAL 14348.
C
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