George Wilbur Peck, a politician and journalist, is known primarily for his creation of the character Hennery, Peck's Bad Boy. Though the Bad Boy books were written for a popular audience, the readers of a weekly humor newspaper, they were read by children, and when Peck wrote Peck's Uncle Ike and the Red Headed Boy (1899), he acknowledged his juvenile readership in his dedication of the book to "bad boys who will later become pillars of society."

Born in Henderson, New York, to David B. and Alzina Peck, Peck moved to Cold Spring, Wisconsin, when he was three, and later to Whitewater, where he was educated in public schools. In 1855 he became a printer's devil on the Whitewater Register, thus beginning a career in journalism which he pursued throughout his life. He was also an apprentice at other local newspapers, finally becoming a foreman for the Watertown Republican . In...