MacDonald Pairman Jackson FNZAH FRSNZ is a New Zealand scholar of English literature.
[7] Jackson's research includes a year-long examination of the disputed authorship of the classic poem "The Night Before Christmas", also called "A Visit from St.
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.
[8] argues that Livingston is the true author and makes a significant contribution to the field of attribution studies.
From 1984 to 1991 Jackson contributed the annual reviews of "Editions and Textual Studies" to Shakespeare Survey.
He contributed to the Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English (1991) edited by Terry Sturm, writing the chapter on "Poetry: Beginnings to 1945".
Jackson has been involved in broadcasting, introducing NZBC's monthly poetry programme in 1966, and a New Zealand Book Awards judge.