Thomas Bailey Aldrich, so closely identified with the Boston Brahmin-literati of the later nineteenth century, was Boston plated rather than the genuine article, to paraphrase his self-description, quoted in the official biography by Ferris Greenslet (1908). This extremely witty humorist, editor, and writer of popular verse, short stories, sketches, and novels-who remains best-known for his slightly fictionalized autobiography, The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), and his epistolary short story "Marjorie Daw" (1873)-was also intimately linked with three other locales: Portsmouth, New Hampshire; New York City; and the village of Ponkapog in Massachusetts.

The son of Elias Taft Aldrich and Sarah Abba Bailey Aldrich, Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, where he lived for the first five years of his life, until 1841 when the family moved to New York. In 1846 they went to live in New Orleans, but in 1849 Aldrich returned to Portsmouth, where he entered Samuel De Merritt's...