Portsmouth Photos: An Old Town by the Sea

Click to see 1917 edition

More Portsmouth at the
dawn of the 20th century

Langdon House By 1917, when this book was published, author Thomas Bailey Aldrich was a literary god in his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His most famous book, "The Story of a Real Boy" had been a classic of American literature since it first appeared in 1893. His family home in Portsmouth, now in the Strawbery Banke Museum had been a local shrine since Bailey's death in 1907. Bailey's publisher Houghton Miflin of Boston had produced more than 30 volumes of the author's work.

"An Old Town by the Sea," first published in 1893, was Bailey's nonfiction history of the same setting where his "bad boy" Tom Bailey grew up. Despite these two books about Portsmouth, Aldrich actually spent only a few years in the home of his grandfather on Court Street. But his vivid memory and intriguing visual pictures still capture the essence of Portsmouth today.

In 1917 the publisher reissued "An Old Town by the Sea" with an intriguing series of photographs. Those images are reprinted here in an extra-large format so viewers can enjoy the equally vivid photos. JDR

Also in our Early Photo Series:

1886 Ice Storm

Attractive Bits Along the Shore

Gosport Harbor, 1860s

Hampton and Hampton Beach

Old Dover Scrapbook

"Old Ironsides"

"Old Town by the Sea"

Victorian Portsmouth