Showing results by author "Thomas Bailey Aldrich" in All Categories

The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), a semi-autobiographical novel by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, is considered the first in the "bad boy" genre of literature. It is hailed as the precursor to stories such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The protagonist, Tom Bailey, is mischievous, a vandal, and a troublemaker. The narrative follows Tom as he engages in a series of adventures from New Hampshire to New Orleans and beyond. Among the supporting characters, Sailor Ben, Miss Abigail, and Conway stand out.

Master wit Mark Twain selected these 27 stories himself by 15 of his favorite 19th-century authors. The order follows that which Twain placed them in in the original anthology, published in 1888. He indulged his comic fancy rather than making a textbook in which all themes or authors are placed together, saying that "This way you will have to peruse the whole thing before discovering that one of your favorites is not included." Among others, you'll find: Artemus Ward, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Lee Pratt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frederick W. Cozzens, and Twain himself.

Via a series of letters between himself and a friend, a man falls in love with a woman he has never met - and receives a shocking surprise when he travels to meet her.

"The Stillwater Tragedy" (1880) is a novel by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Excerpt: "The chimney-stack of one house sends up no smoke. Yet the carefully trained ivy over the porch intimate that the place is not unoccupied. The sun appears to beat in vain at the casements of this silent house, which has a curiously sullen and defiant air, as if it had desperately and successfully barricaded itself against the approach of morning; yet if one were standing in the room that leads from the bed-chamber on the ground-floor - the room with the latticed window - one would see a ray of light thrust through a chink of the shutters, and pointing like a human finger at an object which lies by the hearth.