Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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 writers including Charles W. Chesnutt. When Aldrich was a child, his father moved to New Orleans, but after 10 years, Aldrich was sent back to Portsmouth to prepare for college.

The Aldriches were close friends of Henry L. Pierce, former mayor of Boston and chocolate magnate. At his death in 1896, he willed them his estate at Canton, Massachusetts.

In 1901, Aldrich's son Charles, married the year before, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Aldrich built two houses, one for his son and one for him and his family, in Saranac Lake, New York, then the leading treatment center for the disease. On March 6, 1904, Charles Aldrich died of tuberculosis, age thirty-four. The family left Saranac Lake and never returned.

In 1920, Aldrich's widow published her memoirs, Crowding Memories, which includes accounts of her husband's friendships with Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, Henry James, James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edwin Booth, and other cultural luminaries.

Literary style and criticism Aldrich wrote both in prose and verse. 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.

He was a critic of the dialect verse that was popular at the time. In a 1900 letter referencing contemporary poet James Whitcomb Riley, he wrote, "The English language is too sacred a thing to be mutilated and vulgarized".

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", and the eight-line poem "Identity".

Honors In July 1967, Aldrich Street in Co-op City, Bronx, New York, was named in his honor.

Published works Daisy's Necklace: and What Came of It (1857) The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth (1858) Out of His Head (1862) Père Antoine's Date Palm (1866) Pansie's Wish: A Christmas Fantasy, with a Moral (1870) The Story of a Bad Boy (1870) Marjorie Daw and Other People (1873) Prudence Palfrey (1874) The Queen of Sheba (1877) A Rivermouth Romance (1877) The Story of a Cat (1879) The Stillwater Tragedy (1880) From Ponkapog to Pesth (1883) The Second Son (1888) Wyndham Towers (1889)

Two Bites at a Cherry, with Other Tales (1894) Judith and Holofernes: A Poem (1896) A Sea Turn and Other Matters (1902) Ponkapog Papers (1903)