The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich

COPY # 1
Inscribed by Aldrich


ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY. The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. With photogravure frontispieces and illustrations. 8vo. 9 volumes uniformly bound in polished buckram and paper-covered boards. Cambridge: Printed at the Riverside Press, 1897-1907. Large Paper Edition. Limited to 250 hand-numbered sets, this being set # 1.

The set is inscribed by Aldrich on the front endpaper of volume I: "For Mr. E. B. Holden. Thomas Bailey Aldrich. November 1897."

Edwin Babcock Holden was an early president of the Grolier Club whose library was dispersed in a series of major sales from 1910-1920.

Together with: The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. By Ferris Greenslet. 8vo. Bound in polished buckram and paper-covered boards. Cambridge: Printed at the Riverside Press, 1908. Large Paper Edition. Limited to 500 numbered copies, this being copy # 1. 10 volumes in all, uniformly bound.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was a New England-based poet, novelist, Civil War correspondent and editor who counted among his wide circle of friends such notables as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Whistler, Longfellow, and most significantly, Mark Twain, with whom he remained close for forty years. Aldrich's semi-autobiographical novel The Story of a Bad Boy (included here) is considered by many critics to be the first realistic depiction of childhood in American fiction, and was a direct influence on, and indeed inspired, the writing of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as Twain readily admitted.


Sunning to the spines and spine labels; light soiling to the boards and light bumping to a few corners; occasional faint foxing and toning to the edges of the leaves; o/w clean and sound, with several volumes partially unopened. A superior set, especially internally.