The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich first appeared serially, in 1869 in Our Young Folks magazine. The "bad boy" is named Tom Bailey, and is, as Alrich's adult narrator says at the outset, "not such a very bad, but a pretty bad boy." The title makes it clear that Aldrich, like MT, intends his story as a kind of counter-narrative: neither Tom is a "model boy." Aldrich's book is an account of his childhood in "Rivermouth," New Hampshire, and focuses on various adventures as remembered and retold by the man he grew into. I picked the selection below because it helps suggest how much a fiction like this one, or Tom Sawyer, or even Little Women, although ostensibly written for children, appeals to the generation of contemporary grownups as an act of nostalgia. Here the narrator describes heroism in combat. In the simpler times being remembered, young men from the "North" and "South" fight bravely -- and no one dies or is permanently disfigured.
- ISBN13 9781105655142
- Publish Date 9 April 2012
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Lulu.com
- Format eBook (OEB)
- Language English