The Story of a Bad Boy

hisasemi-autobiographical novel published in 1870. It follows young Tom Bailey, sent from New Orleans to live with his grandfather in New Hampshire, where he joins a boys’clubcalledtheCentipedes. Throughpranks,adventures,andschemes- from stealing carriages for bonfires to epic snowball battles and secret boat expeditions-Tom’smischievousescapadesunfold. Consideredthefirst'bad boy'genrenovel,itcelebrates atroublemakingprotagonistratherthancon demning him, influencing later works like Mark Twain’s 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.. Well, not such a very bad, but a pretty bad boy; and I ought to know, for I am, or rather I was, that boy myself. Lest the title should mislead the reader, I hasten to assure him here that I have no dark confessions to make. I call my story the story of a bad boy, partly to distinguish myself from those faultless young gentlemen who gen erally figure in narratives of this kind, and partly because I really was not a cherub. I may truthfully say I was an amiable, impulsive lad, blessed with fine digestive powers, and no hypocrite. I didn’t want to be an angel and with the angels stand; I didn’t think the missionary tracts presented to me by the Rev. 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. In short, I was a real humanboy,suchasyoumaymeetanywhereinNewEngland,andnomore like the impossible boy in a storybook than a sound orange is like one that has been sucked dry. But let us begin at the beginning