The Story of a Bad Boy was published by Fields, Osgood & Co. in 1870, after serialization in the magazine Our Young Folks in 1869. The narrator, Tom Bailey, tells the story of his boyhood in “Rivermouth” — a lightly fictionalized version of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Aldrich lived from age ten. Tom is “bad” only by the standards of the Sunday-school fiction that dominated children’s literature in the mid-nineteenth century: he is mischievous, adventurous, occasionally reckless, but fundamentally good-hearted.
The novel’s significance is primarily historical: it was the first American novel to present boyhood as it actually was rather than as adults wished it to be. Before Aldrich, fictional American boys were either impossibly virtuous (like the heroes of Jacob Abbott’s “Rollo” books) or cautionary examples of what happened to wicked children. Tom Bailey is neither — he is an ordinary boy who gets into scrapes, forms friendships, has adventures, and gradually matures. Mark Twain acknowledged Aldrich’s influence, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) clearly builds on the template Aldrich established.
The episodes are drawn from Aldrich’s actual experience: the snowball fights, the bonfire on the Fourth of July (in which the boys steal and burn a stagecoach), the sailboat near-disaster, the theatrical performances, and the first intimations of mortality when a friend drowns. The setting — a small New England seaport in the 1840s and 1850s — is rendered with precise physical detail that gives the novel documentary value beyond its literary merit.
Collecting The Story of a Bad Boy
First edition (Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1870): Cloth binding, gilt lettering. First state identified by specific points on title page.
Market values:
- First edition, first state, fine: $300–$800
- First edition, later states: $100–$300
- Very good: $50–$150