An Old Town By the Sea

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was an American poet, novelist, traveller, and editor. His father's death in 1849 compelled Aldrich to abandon the idea of college and he entered his uncle's business office in New York at age 16 in 1852. Here he soon became a constant contributor to the newspapers and magazines. From 1856 to 1859 he was on the staff of the Home Journal and during the Civil War was editor of the New York Illustrated News. Meanwhile Aldrich had written much, both in prose and verse. His genius was many-sided. 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, dainty touch and felicitous conceit, the influence of Herrick being constantly apparent.