Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and lived during a time of great change in American literature.

Aldrich travelled with his father in his early years. He returned to Portsmouth to study for college, but his father's death in 1852 required that he earn a living. At 16, he went to work in his uncle's New York countinghouse, but he spent his free time reading and writing poetry. Then, he decided his calling was to be a journalist. He contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, including the New York Illustrated News. In 1865, he moved to Boston where he was editor of Ticknor & Fields' Every Saturday magazine. In 1881, Aldrich was brought in as editor at the Atlantic Monthly, a position he held until 1890. He was a talented poet and published many volumes of verse. His first published works, the sentimental 'Ballad of Babie Bell' and The Bells (1855), a volume of verse, brought him immediate fame. Aldrich's first novel, The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), was unique in its depiction not of a "bad boy" but of a "natural boy", a type that anticipated Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.

Aldrich died at Boston on 19 March 1907. His last words were "In spite of it all, I'm going to sleep."