A Visit from St. Nicholas (The Night Before Christmas)

US-only throughout — no UK or foreign-language edition is in play. The poem's true first appearance in print is the Troy Sentinel (Troy, New York), 23 December 1823, p. 3, published anonymously as "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas"; the 1848 Onderdonk is the first separate/book edition and the first illustrated edition, NOT the poem's first printing. Two intermediate landmarks matter for precedence: Moore was not publicly named as author until The New-York Book of Poetry (New York: George Dearborn, 1837), and the poem first appeared in a book of Moore's own authorship in his Poems (New York, 1844, pp. 124-127). A ca. 1830 Troy Sentinel broadside carrier's address with a Myron King woodcut is the poem's first appearance as a separate sheet and its first illustration.