‘Twill be a good night when “Twas’ poem is sold

An autographed copy of the classic poem that begins with the familiar line “ ‘Twas the night before Christmas” will be auctioned at Sotheby’s this holiday season.

The handwritten manuscript, signed by author Clement Clarke Moore, is one of just four known autographed copies, according to Sotheby’s. It is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $300,000 when auctioned in New York on Dec. 3.

The poem is as much a part of the holiday tradition as Christmas trees, warm plum pudding, Santa Claus and eggnog.

Moore is believed to have written “Visit From St. Nicholas” on Christmas Eve in 1822 while on a trip to the Bowery in Manhattan to buy the family’s Christmas turkey. He read it to his family that evening, according to Moore family history.

A family friend, Harriet Butler, sent a copy to the Sentinel, a newspaper in Troy, N.Y., that ran it the following Christmas.

Moore apparently did not acknowledge authorship of the poem for more than 15 years and then only reluctantly when it was published in a collection of poetry by Charles Fenno Hoffman, according to Matthew Weigman, a Sotheby’s spokesman.

Moore, also the author of the two-volume “Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language,” is believed to have thought the poem was too light for his reputation as a Hebrew scholar. But it was the Christmas poem that made him famous, Weigman said.

Its most familiar lines are: “ ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,” and its closing lines: “But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.’ ”