To be explicit, he was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1836. His father's pursuit of fortune took Aldrich as a child to many parts of the country, but brought him back to Portsmouth at the age of thirteen. For the next three years he lived there the life which provided the basic facts for "The Story of a Bad Boy." Lack of funds prevented his entering Harvard, and in 1852 he undertook a clerkship in the office of a New York uncle. In 1855, when he was still only nineteen, he published his first volume of poetry and became junior literary critic on the _Evening Mirror_. In the next several years he held a sub-editorship in New York on the _Home Journal_ and the _Saturday Press_ and literary adviserships to several minor publishing houses, capping off with the editorship of the _Illustrated News_, which had become a thing of the past when, in 1866, he was called to Boston to become editor of _Every Saturday_. This post he held for nine years. For the six years up to 1881 he was an abundant contributor to the _Atlantic Monthly_ and for the next nine, 1881-1890, he was the editor. During the remainder of his life he held no literary position. During his fifteen years in New York, Greeley and Bryant, two newspaper editors, were perhaps the dominant figures in the literary and intellectual stratum, Willis and Halleck the most popular, Henry Clapp, Jr., and Charles T. Congdon the cleverest, and "Bohemia," with its rallying point at Pfaff's restaurant, the visible rallying place for the authors.[30] Aldrich gravitated toward this group, but never really belonged to it. Just why he did not can be inferred from a sentence by Howells, whose nature was very like his own: "I remember that, as I sat at that table, under the pavement, in Pfaff's beer-cellar, and listened to the wit that did not seem very funny, I thought of the dinner with Lowell, the breakfast with Fields, the supper at the Autocrat's, and felt that I had fallen very far."[31] [30] For varying sentiments about "Bohemia" see the following passages: Ferris Greenslet, "Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich," pp. 37-47; W. D. Howells, "Literary Friends and Acquaintances," pp. 68-76; Stedman and Gould, "Life of Edmund Clarence Stedman," pp. 208, 209; William Winter, "Old Friends," pp. 291-297. [31] In reply to this and like passages William Winter wrote: "No literary circle comparable with the Bohemian group of that period, in ardor of genius, variety of character, and singularity of achievement, has since existed in New York, nor has any group of writers anywhere existent in our country been so ignorantly and grossly misrepresented and maligned" ("Old Friends," p. 138).