Record Added: 12/31/2018 Setting  United States Topic Children's Fiction, Class Publisher Grosset & Dunlap Publishe Year 1928 Age 9-12 Pages 248 Description White printed dustjacket
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The Story of a Bad Boy (originally published in 1870) is a semi-autobiographical novel by American writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich, fictionalizing his experiences as a boy in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The book is considered the first in the "bad boy" genre of literature, though the text's opening lines admit that he was "not such a very bad, but a pretty bad boy".
Tom Bailey is born in the fictitious town of Rivermouth, New Hampshire (based on Portsmouth, New Hampshire), but moves to New Orleans with his family when he is 18 months old. In his boyhood, his father wants him to be educated in the North and sent him back to Rivermouth to live with his grandfather, Captain Nutter. Nutter lives with his sister and an Irish servant. There, Tom becomes a member of a boys' club called the Centipedes. Together, the boys become involved in a series of adventures. In one prank, the boys steal an old carriage and push it into a bonfire for the Fourth of July.
During the winter, several boys build a snow fort on Slatter's Hill, inciting rival boys into a battle of snowballs. Later, Tom and three other boys combine their money to buy a boat named Dolphin and sneak away to an island. Tom also befriends a man nicknamed Sailor Ben, whom Tom originally meets on the ship that took him away from New Orleans. Revealed as the long-lost husband of Captain Nutter's Irish servant, Ben settles in Rivermouth in a boat-like cabin. Sailor Ben helps the boys fire off a series of old cannon at the pier, much to the confusion of the local townspeople. When his father's banking job fails, Tom is invited by an uncle to work in a counting-house in New York.
Though the main character is relatively mild (something that Aldrich himself admits in the book's opening lines), The Story of a Bad Boy was the first to celebrate a misbehaving boy as protagonist rather than antagonist. Contemporary reviews hailed the book as a departure in traditional children's literature. The book was praised for showing the true life of a boy, rather than dictating what it ought to be. Ultimately, the story shows that a young troublemaker can grow up to become a successful adult. |
Notes
Thomas Bailey Aldritch was a friend and contemporary of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), and the "Story of a Bad Boy" in part triggered Clemens to go back and dig Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn out of his own childhood experiences.
From Dog Eared Books, Afton WY Aug 2017 (at Family Reunion) |
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