A spirited boy sent from New Orleans to live with his grandfather in a small New England seaport gets into one scrape after another with his new friends — torching an old stagecoach among them — in a boyhood memoir that helped invent the American "bad boy" genre later perfected by Tom Sawyer.
Books mentioned in The Story of a Bad Boy (11)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “Wibird Hawkins were half so nice as Robinson Crusoe; and I didn't send my little pocket-money to the natives of the Feejee Islands, but spent it royally in peppermint-drops and taffy candy.”
A Thousand and One Nights: “I do not allude especially to Baxter's Saints' Rest, which is far from being a lively work for the young, but to the Arabian Nights, and particularly Robinson Crusoe.”
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: “What a place in which to read Gulliver's Travels, or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!”
Rinaldo Rinaldini by Christian August Vulpius: “What a place in which to read Gulliver's Travels, or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “Over the head of the bed were two oak shelves, holding perhaps a dozen books--among which were Theodore, or The Peruvians; Robinson Crusoe; an odd volume of Tristram Shandy; Baxter's Saints' Rest, and a fine English edition of the Arabian Nights, with six hundred wood-cuts by Harvey.”
The Saints' Everlasting Rest by Richard Baxter: “If I want to read anything, I can read Baxter's Saints' Rest. I would die first.”
The Life of Baron Trenck by Friedrich von der Trenck: “Baron Trenck, who managed to escape from the fortress of Clatz, can't for the life of him get out of our sitting-room closet.”
Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth: “In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple--all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple--all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.”
Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage: “In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple--all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.”
Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson: “In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Charlotte Temple--all of which I fed upon like a bookworm.”