Walter Aimwell (1822–1859) was the pen name of William Simonds, an American author of juvenile and moral fiction in the mid-nineteenth century. He was born in 1822 in Ashby, Massachusetts. The pen name evokes the moralizing, character-building purpose of his fiction — stories aimed at instilling virtue in young readers. He is known for the Aimwell Series, sometimes called Aimwell's Boys' and Girls' Library, a set of didactic children's novels published in Boston by Gould & Lincoln and similar houses during the 1850s. Its notable titles include Whistler; or, The Manly Boy; Clinton; or, Boy-Life in the Country; Marcus; or, The Boy-Tamer; Oscar; or, The Boy Who Had His Own Way; and Ella; or, Turning Over a New Leaf. His books are typical of the era's Sunday-school and moral-instruction genre, with young protagonists learning lessons in honesty, diligence, and self-discipline through episodic, gently plotted narratives. A minor but representative figure in nineteenth-century American children's literature, he is largely out of print today but preserved in archives as an example of Victorian-era moral fiction for the young. He died in 1859.
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