Charles Dudley Warner (Plainfield, Massachusetts, 1829 - 1900, Hartford, Connecticut)
Tom Bailey's Adventures, or, The Story of a Bad Boy, 1878
Printed ink on paper, 24.1 x 16.5 x 0.6 cm (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 1/4 in.)
Blue Room
Commentary
This autobiographical novel (1869) by a close friend of Mrs. Gardner had a considerable reputation. The tale of a mischievous hero precedes the antics of Tom and Huck and was one of the first in the "bad boy" genre of books for boys. Book piracy was a booming business in the years before the international copyright agreement (1891). This cheap Canadian edition turns Aldrich's title, The Story of a Bad Boy, into a subtitle, perhaps hoping to disguise the piracy. It was published with Charles Dudley Warner's Being a Boy.
Source: Susan Sinclair and Philip B. Eppard. Catalogue of Children’s Books from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection and the Personal Libraries of John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1988), p. 37, no. 53.
Source: Susan Sinclair and Philip B. Eppard. Catalogue of Children’s Books from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection and the Personal Libraries of John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1988), p. 37, no. 53.