Henry Beekman Livingston Jr. (October 13, 1748 – February 29, 1828) was an American poet, and has been proposed as being the uncredited author of the 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, more popularly known (after its first line) as The Night Before Christmas.

Credit for the poem was taken in 1837 by Clement Clarke Moore, a Bible scholar in New York City, nine years after Livingston's death.

During the Revolutionary War, Livingston held a commission as Major under Richard Montgomery on the 1775 expedition to Canada.

In October 1777, Beekman, now a colonel, led the 4th New York Regiment in General Horatio Gates' left wing at the Battle of Saratoga.

Over the next ten years, Livingston began writing poetry and making drawings for his friends and family,[4] some of which ended up in the pages of New York Magazine and the Poughkeepsie Journal.

In 1899, even without proof, Sidney's grandson published the first public claim of Henry's authorship in his own newspaper on Long Island.

[11] In 1920, Henry's great grandson, William Sturgis Thomas became interested in the family stories and began to collect the memories and papers of existing descendants, eventually publishing his research in the issue of the Duchess County Historical Society yearbook.

Thomas provided this material to Winthrop P. Tryon for his article on the subject in the Christian Science Monitor on August 4, 1920.

In 2000 on independent grounds, Donald Wayne Foster, Professor of English at Vassar College, argued in his book Author Unknown, that Livingston is a more likely candidate for authorship than Moore.

[8][14] In response to Foster's claim, Stephen Nissenbaum, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in 2001 that based on his research, Moore was the author.

[16] Foster's claim has also been countered by document dealer and historian Seth Kaller, who once owned one of Moore's original manuscripts of the poem.

Kaller has offered a point-by-point rebuttal of both Foster's linguistic analysis and external findings, buttressed by the work of autograph expert James Lowe and Dr. Joe Nickell, author of Pen, Ink and Evidence.

: Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore Vs. Henry Livingston Question,[20] he evaluates the opposing arguments as the first analyst to employ the author-attribution techniques of modern computational stylistics.