Thomas Bailey Aldrich established his reputation in 1865 when his poetry was enshrined by Ticknor and Fields in the distinguished Blue and Gold series, one of the highest honors an American poet could then receive. Only twenty-nine years old, Aldrich thus joined company with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, William Cullen Bryant, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Throughout the Gilded Age Aldrich represented continuity with an older New England past. Fittingly, his best work of fiction, the juvenile classic The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), is a nostalgic look at his New England boyhood. In his mature years Aldrich defended and exemplified the literary values of the genteel tradition--decorum, sincerity, refinement--in his role as editor of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly from February 1881 to March 1890.

Soon after Aldrich was born on 11 November 1836 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, his family traveled extensively on business until settling first in New York for three...