1836-1907
Thomas Bailey Aldrich is best remembered for being the long time editor of The Atlantic Monthly magazine from 1881 to 1890. But he was also a writer of poetry, prose and criticism. Born on this day in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he was taken as a child to New Orleans, returning to New England at near college age some ten years later. He never went to college, instead going to work in his teens for an Uncle in New York where he began to write for publication in both newspapers and magazines. He was also fast friends with the New York area writers community of the time; which is eventually what led him into the field of editing. Promoting writers of an ever increasing circle of acquaintance landed him with an editor's job in the late 1850's, leading to an important job of being the editor of The New York Illustrated News during the Civil War (copies of which are housed at the Library of Congress in their "Chronicling America" section preserving newspapers--some are posted on line, including Civil War political cartoons*). Magazine editing then became his career; but for someone who was such a busy and important editor, he also found time to write a large number of works. And, of course, it because of these that he has a little write up here. Two films have been produced using his work for scenarios, both of them in the silent era of the 1910's; they are also interconnected films. The first, Judith of Bethulia, was based on one of Alrich's poems; partially adapted by it's director, the film was made for Biograph--the director, by the way, was D. W. Griffith. The film was released on the 8th of March, 1914 and was quite a lavish production--it's price tag reportedly one of the reasons that Griffith left Biograph, having been put back in charge of one-reelers after the film's release (there was also a Broadway production ten years prior, based of the same dramatic poem--and with the same title; it was quite successful; the film's screenplay was heavily reliant on that play for material). Part of the reason that I spent so much space on the first film, is that the second is a cut from that film. In 1917, D. W. Griffith edited together a few newly shot scenes from the original screenplay and his Biograph film from 1914 to create Her Condoned Sin. No other films were ever produced from Aldrich's volume of writing. He lived long enough to see the production of his work on Broadway, but passed away three years later on the 19th of March in 1907 at the age of 70. He is buried at Cambridge, Massachusetts' famed Mount Auburn Cemetery.
[Source: Bobby Kelley (Find A Grave)]
[a Daguerrotype of Aldrich, a current holding of Harvard University]
*I just had to mention this, as there is no one link that can be posted for this one newspaper on their site...and I got lost in wonder clicking through what is there, before I knew it...I had been tooling around for a couple of hours...it's a bit addictive.
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