Publisher's Synopsis
Thomas Bailey Aldrich ( November 11, 1836 - March 19, 1907) was an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He is notable for his long editorship of The Atlantic Monthly, during which he published works by Charles W. Chesnutt and others. He was also known for his semi-autobiographical book The Story of a Bad Boy, which established the "bad boy's book" subgenre in nineteenth-century American literature, and for his poetry, which included "The Unguarded Gates"Early life and educationThomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on November 11, 1836. When Aldrich was a child, his father moved to New Orleans. After 10 years, Aldrich was sent back to Portsmouth to prepare for college. This period of his life is partly described in his semi-autobiographical novel The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), in which "Tom Bailey" is the juvenile hero.CareerAldrich abandoned college preparations after his father's death in 1849. At age 16, he entered his uncle's business office in New York City in 1852 and became a constant contributor to the newspapers and magazines. Aldrich befriended other young poets, artists and wits of the metropolitan bohemia of the early 1860s, including Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Henry Stoddard, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Bayard Taylor and Walt Whitman. From 1856 to 1859, Aldrich was on the staff of the Home Journal, then edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis. During the Civil War, he was the editor of the New York Illustrated News. In 1865 Aldrich returned to New England, where he was editor in Boston for ten years for Ticknor and Fields-then at the height of their prestige-of the eclectic weekly Every Saturday. It was discontinued in 1875. From 1881 to 1890, Aldrich was editor of the important Atlantic Monthly. As editor, he created tension with his publisher Henry Houghton by refusing to publish commissioned articles by his friends, including Woodrow Wilson and Francis Marion Crawford. When Houghton chastised Aldrich for turning down submissions from his friend Daniel Coit Gilman, Aldrich threatened to resign and finally did so in June 1890.Meanwhile, Aldrich continued his private writing, both in prose and verse. His talent was many-sided. He was well known for his form in poetry. His successive volumes of verse, chiefly The Ballad of Babie Bell (1856), Pampinea, and Other Poems (1861), Cloth of Gold (1874), Flower and Thorn (1876), Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book (1881), Mercedes and Later Lyrics (1883), Wyndham Towers (1889), and the collected editions of 1865, 1882, 1897 and 1900, showed him to be a poet of lyrical skill and light touch. Critics believed him to show the influence of Robert Herrick.Aldrich's longer narrative or dramatic poems were not as successful. Notable work includes such lyrics as "Hesperides," "When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan," "Before the Rain," "Nameless Pain," "The Tragedy," "Seadrift," "Tiger Lilies," "The One White Rose," "Palabras Cariñosas," "Destiny," or the eight-line poem "Identity."
