Horatio Alger, Jr.
Encyclopedia
Horatio Alger, Jr. was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many formulaic juvenile novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. He initially wrote and published for adults, but a friendship with boys' author William Taylor Adams
led him to writing for the young. He published for years in Adams's Student and Schoolmate, a children's magazine of moral writings. His lifelong theme of rags to respectability had a profound impact on America in the Gilded Age
. His works gained even greater popularity following his death, but gradually lost reader interest in the 1920s. Horatio Alger is also mentioned in the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Alger was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts
in 1832, and entered Harvard College
at age sixteen. At seventeen he became a professional writer with the sale of a few literary pieces to a Boston magazine. Following graduation, he worked briefly as an assistant editor for a Boston magazine before teaching in New England boys' schools for a few years. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School
in 1860, wrote in support of the Union cause during the American Civil War
, and accepted a ministerial post with a Unitarian church
in Brewster, Massachusetts
in 1864. He left the church in 1866 following an internal investigation regarding sexual misconduct involving two teenage boys of the parish. He denied nothing, and relocated to New York City
.
In 1864 Alger published his first boys' book Frank's Campaign, and in 1865 his second boys' book Paul Prescott's Charge. His third boys' book Charlie Codman's Cruise was published in 1866. His literary niche was made secure in 1868 with his fourth boys' book Ragged Dick
, the story of a poor bootblack's rise to middle-class respectability. The book was a great success. His many boys' books that followed were essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured a series of stock characters – the valiant youth, the noble mysterious stranger, the snobbish youth, and the evil squire. In the 1870s Alger took a trip to California
to gather material for future books, but the trip had little influence on his writing; he remained firmly fixed in his rags to respectability formula. The Puritan ethic had loosened its grip on America during these years, and Alger's moral tone coarsened. Violence, murder, and other sensational themes entered his works; public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young. He published about 100 boys' books and died in 1899. A biography that eventually proved to be a hoax was published in 1928 and held great sway for many years. Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans
has bestowed awards and scholarship
s on the deserving, and in 1982 Alger's works inspired a musical comedy called Shine!
.
coastal town of Chelsea, Massachusetts
, on January 13, 1832, to Horatio Alger, a Unitarian
minister, and his wife Olive Augusta Fenno. He was the descendant of Plymouth Pilgrims Robert Cushman
, Thomas Cushman, and William Bassett and the descendant of Sylvanus Lazell, a Minuteman and brigadier general
in the War of 1812
; and Edmund Lazell, a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1788. Horatio's siblings Olive Augusta and James were born in 1833 and 1836, and an invalid sister Annie and a brother Francis in 1840 and 1842. Alger was a precocious boy afflicted with nearsightedness and bronchial asthma, but Alger, Sr. decided early that his eldest son would one day enter the ministry, and, to that end, he tutored the boy in classical studies and allowed him to observe the responsibilities of ministering to parishioners. Alger began attending the Chelsea Grammar School in 1842, but by December 1844 his father's financial troubles had increased considerably and, in search of a better salary, he moved his family to Marlborough, Massachusetts
, an agricultural town 25 miles west of Boston. He was installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Society in January 1845 with a salary sufficient to meet his needs. Horatio attended Gates Academy, a local preparatory school
, and completed his studies at age fifteen. He published his earliest literary work in area newspapers.
entrance examinations, and was admitted to the class of 1852. The fourteen member full-time Harvard faculty included Louis Agassiz
and Asa Gray
(sciences), C. C. Felton (classics), James Walker
(religion and philosophy), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(belles lettres). Edward Everett
served as president. Alger's classmate Joseph Choate described Harvard at this time as "provincial and local because its scope and outlook hardly extended beyond the boundaries of New England; besides which it was very denominational, being held exclusively in the hands of Unitarians."
Alger flowered in the highly disciplined and regimented Harvard environment, winning scholastic prizes and prestigious awards. His genteel poverty and less than aristocratic heritage however barred him from membership in the Hasty Pudding
and Porcellian clubs. In 1849 he became a professional writer when he sold two essays and a poem to the Pictorial National Library, a Boston magazine. He began reading Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper
, Herman Melville
, and other modern writers of fiction, and cultivated a lifelong love for Longfellow, whose verse he sometimes employed as a model for his own. He was chosen Class Odist, and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1852, eighth in a class of 88.
Alger had no job prospects following graduation and returned home. He continued to write, submitting his work to religious and literary magazines with varying success. He briefly attended Harvard Divinity School
in 1853, possibly to be reunited with a romantic interest, but left in November 1853 to take a job as an assistant editor with the Boston Daily Advertiser
. He loathed editing and quit in 1854 to teach at The Grange, a boys' boarding school
in Rhode Island
. When The Grange suspended operations in 1856, Alger found employment managing the 1856 summer session at Deerfield Academy
. His poems at this time expressed a sexual ambivalence, and were sometimes written in a woman's voice.
His first book, a collection of short pieces called Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf, was published in 1856, and his second book, a lengthy satirical poem called Nothing to Do: A Tilt at our Best Society was published in 1857. He attended the Harvard Divinity School
from 1857 to 1860, and followed graduation with a tour of Europe. In the spring of 1861, he returned to a nation in the throes of the American Civil War
. Drafted but exempted from military service in July 1863, he wrote in support of the Union cause, and hob-nobbed with New England intellectuals. He was elected an officer in the New England Genealogical Society in 1863.
His first novel Marie Bertrand: The Felon's Daughter was serialized
in the New York Weekly in 1864, and his first boys' book Frank's Campaign was published by A. K. Loring in Boston the same year. Alger wrote for adult magazines at this time, including Harper's Monthly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
. Between ministerial duties, he organized games and amusements for the boys in the parish, railed against smoking and drinking, and organized and served as president of the local chapter of the Cadets for Temperance. He submitted stories to Student and Schoolmate, a boys' monthly magazine of moral writings edited by William Taylor Adams
(Oliver Optic) and published in Boston by Joseph H. Allen. In September 1865 his second boys' book Paul Prescott's Charge was published by Loring to favorable reviews.
Early in 1866 a church committee was formed to investigate sexual misconduct reports about Alger. He denied nothing, admitted he had been imprudent, considered his association with the church dissolved, and left town. Church officials reported to the hierarchy in Boston that Alger had been charged with "the crime of ... unnatural familiarity with boys." Alger sent Unitarian officials in Boston a letter of remorse, and his father assured them his son would never seek another post in the church. Officials were satisfied and decided no further action would be taken.
Alger relocated to New York City
, abandoned forever any thought of a career in the church, and focused instead on his writing. He wrote "Friar Anselmo" at this time, a poem that tells of a sinning cleric's atonement through good deeds. He became interested in the welfare of the thousands of vagrant children who flooded New York City following the Civil War. He attended a children's church service at Five Points
which led to "John Maynard", a ballad
about an actual shipwreck on Lake Erie
that brought Alger not only the respect of the literati but a letter from Longfellow
. He published two adult novels Helen Ford and Timothy Crump's Ward which did poorly. He fared better with stories for boys published in Student and Schoolmate and a third boys' book Charlie Codman's Cruise.
In January 1867 the first of twelve installments of Ragged Dick
appeared in Student and Schoolmate. The story about a poor bootblack's rise to middle class respectability was a huge success. It was expanded, and published as a novel in 1868. It proved to be his bestseller. After Ragged Dick he wrote almost entirely for boys, and signed a contract with publisher Loring for a Ragged Dick Series.
In spite of the series' success, Alger was on financially uncertain ground and tutored the five sons of international banker Joseph Seligman
. He wrote serials for Young Israel, and lived in the Seligman home until 1876. In 1875 Alger produced the serial Shifting for Himself and Sam's Chance, a sequel to The Young Outlaw. It was evident in these that Alger had grown stale. Profits suffered, and he headed West for new material at Loring's behest, arriving in California
in February 1877. He enjoyed a reunion with his brother James in San Francisco and returned to New York late in 1877 via a schooner around Cape Horn
. He wrote a few lackluster books in the following years that rehashed the formulaic Alger of old but this time the tales were played before a Western backcloth rather than an urban one.
In New York, Alger continued to tutor the town's aristocratic youth and to rehabilitate its street boys. He was writing both urban and Western-themed tales. In 1879, for example, he published The District Messenger Boy and The Young Miner. In 1877 Alger's fiction became a target of librarians concerned about sensational juvenile fiction. An effort was made to remove Alger's works from public collections, but the debate was only partially successful, defeated by the renewed interest in Alger's work after his death.
In 1881 Alger informally adopted street boy Charlie Davis and in 1883 John Downie, another street boy who moved into Alger's apartment. In 1881 he wrote President James A. Garfield's biography, but filled the work with contrived conversations and boyish excitements rather than facts. The book sold well. Alger was commissioned to give Abraham Lincoln
a biographical treatment but again it was Alger the boys' novelist opting for thrills rather than facts.
In 1882, Alger's father died. Alger continued to produce tale after tale of honest boys outwitting evil, greedy squires and malicious youths. His work appeared in hardcover and paperback, and decades-old poems were published in anthologies. He led a busy life with the street boys, his Harvard classmates, and the social elite. In Massachusetts he was regarded with the same reverence as Harriet Beecher Stowe
. He tutored with never a whisper of scandal.
He attended the theater and Harvard reunions, read the literary magazines, and wrote a poem at Longfellow's death in 1892. His last novel for adults The Disagreeable Woman was published under the pseudonym Julian Starr. He took pleasure in the successes of the boys he had informally adopted over the years, retained his interest in reform, accepted speaking engagements, and read portions of Ragged Dick to boys' assemblies.
His popularity dwindled in the 1890s, and with it his income. In 1896 he had (what he called) a nervous breakdown; he relocated permanently to his sister's home in South Natick, Massachusetts. In the last two years of his life he suffered from bronchitis
and asthma
, and died on July 18, 1899. His death was barely noticed by the newspapers.
Before his death, Alger asked Edward Stratemeyer
to complete his unfinished works. In 1901, Young Captain Jack was completed by Stratemeyer and promoted as Alger's last work. Alger once estimated that he earned only $100,000 between 1866 and 1896; at his death he had little money, leaving only small sums to family and friends. His literary work was bequeathed to his niece, to two boys he had casually adopted, and to his sister Olive Augusta who destroyed his manuscripts and his letters at his wish.
Alger's works experienced a resurgence following his death and sold in the millions. They attracted favorable critical comment, but readers lost interest at the advent of the Jazz Age
. Estimates of books sold between his death and the 1920s range from seventeen million to twenty million. In 1926, however, reader interest plummeted and his major publisher ceased printing the books altogether. Surveys in 1932 and 1947 revealed very few children had read or even heard of Alger. The first Alger biography was a heavily fictionalized account by Herbert R. Mayes in 1928. Mayes later admitted the work was a fraud.
has bestowed an annual award on "outstanding individuals in our society who have succeeded in the face of adversity" and scholarship
s "to encourage young people to pursue their dreams with determination and perseverance."
A 1982 musical, Shine!
, was based on Alger's work, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy. It has been performed off and on since, including Off Broadway.
, Shakespeare (in half his books), John Milton
, Longfellow
, Cicero
, Horace
, Joseph Addison
, Oliver Goldsmith
, Alexander Pope
, Thomas Gray
, William Cowper
, and many others. "By the diversity of his allusions," Scharnhorst writes, "Alger ... both revealed his erudition and enhanced the literary quality of his work."
Scharnhorst decries six major themes in Alger's boys' books. The first, the Rise to Respectability, he observes, is evident in both his early and late books, notably in Ragged Dick whose young impoverished hero declares: "I mean to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable." His virtuous life wins him – not riches – but, more realistically, a comfortable clerical position and salary. The second major theme explores Character Strengthened Through Adversity. In Strong and Steady and Shifting for Himself, for example, the affluent heroes are reduced to poverty and forced to meet the demands of their new circumstances. Alger occasionally cited the young Abe Lincoln as a representative of this theme for his readers. The third theme is Beauty versus Money, which became central to Alger's adult fiction. Characters fall in love and marry based on the their character, talents, or intellect rather than the size of their bank accounts. In The Train Boy, for example, a wealthy heiress chooses to marry a talented but struggling artist and in The Erie Train Boy a poor woman wins her true love despite the machinations of a rich, depraved suitor.
All of Alger's boys' novels rework the same plot: a young boy struggles to escape poverty through hard work and clean living. However, it is not always the hard work and clean living that rescue the boy from his situation, but rather a wealthy older gentleman, who admires the boy as a result of some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty that the boy has performed. For example, the boy might rescue a child from an overturned carriage or find and return the man's stolen watch. Often the older man takes the boy into his home as a ward or companion and helps him find a better job (sometimes replacing a less honest or industrious boy).
According to Scharnhorst, Alger's father was "an impoverished man" who defaulted on his debts in 1844. His properties around Chelsea were seized and assigned to a local squire who held the mortgages. Scharnhorst speculates this episode in Alger's childhood accounts for the recurrent theme in his boys' books of heroes being threatened with eviction or foreclosure, and may account for Alger's "consistent espousal of environmental reform proposals". Scharnhorst writes "Financially insecure throughout his life, the younger Alger may have been active in reform organizations such as those for temperance and children's aid as a means of resolving his status-anxiety and establish his genteel credentials for leadership."
Hoyt believes that about 1880 Horatio's morality was "coarsened" (possibly through the Western tales he was writing) because "the most dreadful things were now almost casually proposed and explored in the Alger books." He continued to write of boys and their fortunes (and was met with the same enthusiasm by new generations of readers) but the violence and "the openness in the relations between the sexes and generations" were something he would never have attempted in the 1860s. The Puritan ethic was losing its grasp on America, Hoyt reminds his reader, and this ideological change was reflected in Alger's work.
Scholar John Geck of the University of Rochester
libraries' The Cinderella Bibliography notes that Alger relied on "formulas for experience rather than shrewd analysis of human behavior." Geck points out that "the formulas Alger employs are culturally centered" and are "strongly didactic and work only insofar as they effectively address the social concerns and aspirations of adolescents facing the uncertainties of growing up male in a polyglot America that exudes confidence and certainty to mask its lack thereof as its population and geographical territory burgeons." The frontier had been closed when Alger was writing he observes, "[b]ut the idea of the frontier, even in urban slums, provides a kind of fairy tale orientation in which a Jack mentality
can be both celebrated and critiqued ... Alger's works are intended for the young whose motivations for action are effectively shaped by the lessons they learn."
Geck notes that perception of the "pluck" characteristic of an Alger hero has changed over the decades. During the Jazz Age
and the Great Depression
, "the Horatio Alger plot was viewed from the perspective of the Progressive movement as a staunch defense of laissez-faire capitalism, yet at the same time criticizing the cutthroat business techniques and offering hope to a suffering young generation during the Great Depression.“ By the Atomic Age
however "Alger's hero was no longer a poor boy who, through determination and providence rose to middle-class respectability. He was instead the crafty street urchin who through quick wits and luck rose from impoverishment to riches."
Geck observes that Alger's themes have been transformed in modern America from their original meanings into a Male Cinderella myth, and are an Americanization of the traditional Jack tales
. Each story has its clever hero, its "fairy godmother", and obstacles and hindrances to the hero's rise. "However", he writes, "[T]he true Americanization of this fairy tale occurs in its subversion of this claiming of nobility; rather, the Alger hero achieves the American Dream in its nascent form, he gains a position of middle-class respectability that promises to lead wherever his motivation may take him." The reader may speculate what Cinderella achieved as Queen and what an Alger hero attained once his middle class status was stabilized and "[i]t is this commonality that fixes Horatio Alger firmly in the ranks of modern adaptors of the Cinderella myth."
wrote that Alger "talks freely about his own late insanity—which he in fact appears to enjoy as a subject of conversation." Although Alger was willing to speak to James, his sexuality was a closely guarded secret. According to Scharnhorst, Alger made veiled references to homosexuality in his boys' books and these references, Scharnhorst speculates, indicate Alger was "insecure with his sexual orientation." Alger wrote, for example, that it was difficult to distinguish whether Tattered Tom was a boy or a girl and in other instances he introduces foppish, effiminate, lisping "stereotypical homosexuals" who are treated with scorn and pity by others. In Silas Snobden's Office Boy, a kidnapped boy disguised as a girl is threatened with the "insane asylum" if he should reveal his actual sex. Scharnhorst believes Alger's desire to atone for his "secret sin" may have "spurred him to identify his own charitable acts of writing didactic books for boys with the acts of the charitable patrons in his books who wish to atone for a secret sin in their past by aiding the hero." Scharnhorst points out that the patron in Try and Trust, for example, conceals a "sad secret" from which he is redeemed only after saving the hero's life.
Alan Trachtenberg
of Yale University
points out in his introduction to the Signet Classic edition of Ragged Dick
(1990) that Alger had tremendous sympathy for boys and discovered a calling for himself in the composition of boys' books. "He learned to consult the boy in himself," Trachtenberg writes, "[T]o transmute and recast himself—his genteel culture, his liberal patrician sympathy for underdogs, his shaky economic status as an author, and not least, his dangerous erotic attraction to boys—into his juvenile fiction. He observes that it is impossible to know whether Alger lived the life of a secret homosexual, "[b]ut there are hints that the male companionship he describes as a refuge from the streets—the cozy domestic arrangements between Dick and Fosdick, for example—may also be an erotic relationship." Trachtenberg observes that nothing prurient occurs in Ragged Dick but believes the few instances in Alger's work of two boys touching or a man and a boy touching "might arouse erotic wishes in readers prepared to entertain such fantasies." Such images, Trachtenberg believes, may imply "a positive view of homoertoicism as an alternative way of life, of living by sympathy rather than aggression." Trachtenberg concludes "[I]n Ragged Dick we see Alger plotting domestic romance, complete with a surrogate marriage of two homeless boys, as the setting for his formulaic metamorphosis of an outcast street boy into a self-respecting citizen."
and The Flag of Our Nation. Other Gleason publications printed about 100 stories before he began writing for Student and Schoolmate.
Alger had many publishers over the decades. His first was A. K. Loring of Boston, and when Loring declared bankruptcy in 1881, Porter & Coates became his second and Henry T. Coates and Company his third. Other publishers include G. W. Carleton, J. S. Oglivie, John Anderson who published the biographies, A. L. Burt, Frank Munsey, Penn Publishing, and Street & Smith
. M. A. Donahue and the New York Book Company published inexpensive paperback reprints by the thousands. It is believed there were at least 60 publishers releasing Alger.
William Taylor Adams
William Taylor Adams , pseudonym Oliver Optic, was a noted academic, author, and Massachusetts state legislator. He was born in Medway, Massachusetts in 1822 to Captain Laban Adams and Catherine Johnson Adams....
led him to writing for the young. He published for years in Adams's Student and Schoolmate, a children's magazine of moral writings. His lifelong theme of rags to respectability had a profound impact on America in the Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
. His works gained even greater popularity following his death, but gradually lost reader interest in the 1920s. Horatio Alger is also mentioned in the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Alger was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts
Chelsea, Massachusetts
Chelsea is a city in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States directly across the Mystic River from the city of Boston. It is the smallest city in Massachusetts in land area, and the 26th most densely populated incorporated place in the country.-History:...
in 1832, and entered Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
at age sixteen. At seventeen he became a professional writer with the sale of a few literary pieces to a Boston magazine. Following graduation, he worked briefly as an assistant editor for a Boston magazine before teaching in New England boys' schools for a few years. He graduated from Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
in 1860, wrote in support of the Union cause during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and accepted a ministerial post with a Unitarian church
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
in Brewster, Massachusetts
Brewster, Massachusetts
Brewster is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population of Brewster was 9,820 at the 2010 census.Brewster is twinned with the town of Budleigh Salterton in the United Kingdom....
in 1864. He left the church in 1866 following an internal investigation regarding sexual misconduct involving two teenage boys of the parish. He denied nothing, and relocated to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
In 1864 Alger published his first boys' book Frank's Campaign, and in 1865 his second boys' book Paul Prescott's Charge. His third boys' book Charlie Codman's Cruise was published in 1866. His literary niche was made secure in 1868 with his fourth boys' book Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's...
, the story of a poor bootblack's rise to middle-class respectability. The book was a great success. His many boys' books that followed were essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured a series of stock characters – the valiant youth, the noble mysterious stranger, the snobbish youth, and the evil squire. In the 1870s Alger took a trip to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to gather material for future books, but the trip had little influence on his writing; he remained firmly fixed in his rags to respectability formula. The Puritan ethic had loosened its grip on America during these years, and Alger's moral tone coarsened. Violence, murder, and other sensational themes entered his works; public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young. He published about 100 boys' books and died in 1899. A biography that eventually proved to be a hoax was published in 1928 and held great sway for many years. Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans
Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans
The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is a nonprofit organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, that was founded in 1947 to honor the achievements of outstanding Americans who have succeeded in spite of adversity and to emphasize the importance of higher education...
has bestowed awards and scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
s on the deserving, and in 1982 Alger's works inspired a musical comedy called Shine!
Shine! (musical)
Shine! is a musical based on characters and situations found in the works of Horatio Alger, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy, respectively Alger's first best-seller and the one first printed in book form eighty years after it was first serialized in Argosy...
.
Childhood: 1832–1847
Horatio Alger, Jr. was born in the New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
coastal town of Chelsea, Massachusetts
Chelsea, Massachusetts
Chelsea is a city in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States directly across the Mystic River from the city of Boston. It is the smallest city in Massachusetts in land area, and the 26th most densely populated incorporated place in the country.-History:...
, on January 13, 1832, to Horatio Alger, a Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister, and his wife Olive Augusta Fenno. He was the descendant of Plymouth Pilgrims Robert Cushman
Robert Cushman
Robert Cushman was one of the Pilgrims. He was born in the village of Rolvenden in Kent, England, and was baptized in the parish church there on February 9, 1577/78. He spent part of his early life in Canterbury on Sun Street. Cushman married Sarah Reder on 31 July 1606...
, Thomas Cushman, and William Bassett and the descendant of Sylvanus Lazell, a Minuteman and brigadier general
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
in the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
; and Edmund Lazell, a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1788. Horatio's siblings Olive Augusta and James were born in 1833 and 1836, and an invalid sister Annie and a brother Francis in 1840 and 1842. Alger was a precocious boy afflicted with nearsightedness and bronchial asthma, but Alger, Sr. decided early that his eldest son would one day enter the ministry, and, to that end, he tutored the boy in classical studies and allowed him to observe the responsibilities of ministering to parishioners. Alger began attending the Chelsea Grammar School in 1842, but by December 1844 his father's financial troubles had increased considerably and, in search of a better salary, he moved his family to Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...
, an agricultural town 25 miles west of Boston. He was installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Society in January 1845 with a salary sufficient to meet his needs. Horatio attended Gates Academy, a local preparatory school
University-preparatory school
A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education...
, and completed his studies at age fifteen. He published his earliest literary work in area newspapers.
Harvard and early works: 1848–1864
In July 1848 Alger passed the HarvardHarvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
entrance examinations, and was admitted to the class of 1852. The fourteen member full-time Harvard faculty included Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
and Asa Gray
Asa Gray
-References:*Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.*Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.*Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001....
(sciences), C. C. Felton (classics), James Walker
James Walker
-Politics:*James Walker , English MP for Exeter*Sir James Walker, 2nd Baronet , British MP for Beverley*Jimmy Walker , born James J...
(religion and philosophy), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
(belles lettres). Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
served as president. Alger's classmate Joseph Choate described Harvard at this time as "provincial and local because its scope and outlook hardly extended beyond the boundaries of New England; besides which it was very denominational, being held exclusively in the hands of Unitarians."
Hasty Pudding Club
The Hasty Pudding Club is a social club for Harvard students. It was founded by Nymphus Hatch, a junior at Harvard College, in 1770. The club is named for the traditional American dish that the founding members ate at their first meeting...
and Porcellian clubs. In 1849 he became a professional writer when he sold two essays and a poem to the Pictorial National Library, a Boston magazine. He began reading Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
, and other modern writers of fiction, and cultivated a lifelong love for Longfellow, whose verse he sometimes employed as a model for his own. He was chosen Class Odist, and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1852, eighth in a class of 88.
Alger had no job prospects following graduation and returned home. He continued to write, submitting his work to religious and literary magazines with varying success. He briefly attended Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
in 1853, possibly to be reunited with a romantic interest, but left in November 1853 to take a job as an assistant editor with the Boston Daily Advertiser
Boston Daily Advertiser
The Boston Daily Advertiser was the first daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston.-History:...
. He loathed editing and quit in 1854 to teach at The Grange, a boys' boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
. When The Grange suspended operations in 1856, Alger found employment managing the 1856 summer session at Deerfield Academy
Deerfield Academy
Deerfield Academy is an independent, coeducational boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, United States. It is a four-year college-preparatory school with approximately 600 students and about 100 faculty, all of whom live on or near campus....
. His poems at this time expressed a sexual ambivalence, and were sometimes written in a woman's voice.
His first book, a collection of short pieces called Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf, was published in 1856, and his second book, a lengthy satirical poem called Nothing to Do: A Tilt at our Best Society was published in 1857. He attended the Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
from 1857 to 1860, and followed graduation with a tour of Europe. In the spring of 1861, he returned to a nation in the throes of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Drafted but exempted from military service in July 1863, he wrote in support of the Union cause, and hob-nobbed with New England intellectuals. He was elected an officer in the New England Genealogical Society in 1863.
His first novel Marie Bertrand: The Felon's Daughter was serialized
Serialization
In computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later in the same or another computer environment...
in the New York Weekly in 1864, and his first boys' book Frank's Campaign was published by A. K. Loring in Boston the same year. Alger wrote for adult magazines at this time, including Harper's Monthly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
Ministry: 1864–1866
On December 8, 1864 Alger was installed as pastor with the First Unitarian Church and Society of Brewster, MassachusettsBrewster, Massachusetts
Brewster is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population of Brewster was 9,820 at the 2010 census.Brewster is twinned with the town of Budleigh Salterton in the United Kingdom....
. Between ministerial duties, he organized games and amusements for the boys in the parish, railed against smoking and drinking, and organized and served as president of the local chapter of the Cadets for Temperance. He submitted stories to Student and Schoolmate, a boys' monthly magazine of moral writings edited by William Taylor Adams
William Taylor Adams
William Taylor Adams , pseudonym Oliver Optic, was a noted academic, author, and Massachusetts state legislator. He was born in Medway, Massachusetts in 1822 to Captain Laban Adams and Catherine Johnson Adams....
(Oliver Optic) and published in Boston by Joseph H. Allen. In September 1865 his second boys' book Paul Prescott's Charge was published by Loring to favorable reviews.
Early in 1866 a church committee was formed to investigate sexual misconduct reports about Alger. He denied nothing, admitted he had been imprudent, considered his association with the church dissolved, and left town. Church officials reported to the hierarchy in Boston that Alger had been charged with "the crime of ... unnatural familiarity with boys." Alger sent Unitarian officials in Boston a letter of remorse, and his father assured them his son would never seek another post in the church. Officials were satisfied and decided no further action would be taken.
New York City: 1866–1896
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, abandoned forever any thought of a career in the church, and focused instead on his writing. He wrote "Friar Anselmo" at this time, a poem that tells of a sinning cleric's atonement through good deeds. He became interested in the welfare of the thousands of vagrant children who flooded New York City following the Civil War. He attended a children's church service at Five Points
Five Points
Five Points may refer to:*Five Points, Alabama*Five Points, California , multiple locations*Five Points, Florida*Five Points, North Carolina*Five Points, Ohio*Five Points, Pennsylvania , multiple locations...
which led to "John Maynard", a ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
about an actual shipwreck on Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
that brought Alger not only the respect of the literati but a letter from Longfellow
Longfellow
Longfellow may refer to:* Longfellow, Minneapolis, United States** Longfellow , Minneapolis, United States* Longfellow, Oakland, California, United States* Longfellow , one of America's first great thoroughbred racehorses...
. He published two adult novels Helen Ford and Timothy Crump's Ward which did poorly. He fared better with stories for boys published in Student and Schoolmate and a third boys' book Charlie Codman's Cruise.
In January 1867 the first of twelve installments of Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's...
appeared in Student and Schoolmate. The story about a poor bootblack's rise to middle class respectability was a huge success. It was expanded, and published as a novel in 1868. It proved to be his bestseller. After Ragged Dick he wrote almost entirely for boys, and signed a contract with publisher Loring for a Ragged Dick Series.
In spite of the series' success, Alger was on financially uncertain ground and tutored the five sons of international banker Joseph Seligman
Joseph Seligman
Joseph Seligman was a prominent U.S. banker, and businessman. He has been described as a "robber baron". He was born in Baiersdorf, Germany, emigrating to the United States when he was 18. With his brothers, he started a bank, J. & W. Seligman & Co., with branches in New York, San Francisco, New...
. He wrote serials for Young Israel, and lived in the Seligman home until 1876. In 1875 Alger produced the serial Shifting for Himself and Sam's Chance, a sequel to The Young Outlaw. It was evident in these that Alger had grown stale. Profits suffered, and he headed West for new material at Loring's behest, arriving in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in February 1877. He enjoyed a reunion with his brother James in San Francisco and returned to New York late in 1877 via a schooner around Cape Horn
Cape Horn
Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...
. He wrote a few lackluster books in the following years that rehashed the formulaic Alger of old but this time the tales were played before a Western backcloth rather than an urban one.
In New York, Alger continued to tutor the town's aristocratic youth and to rehabilitate its street boys. He was writing both urban and Western-themed tales. In 1879, for example, he published The District Messenger Boy and The Young Miner. In 1877 Alger's fiction became a target of librarians concerned about sensational juvenile fiction. An effort was made to remove Alger's works from public collections, but the debate was only partially successful, defeated by the renewed interest in Alger's work after his death.
In 1881 Alger informally adopted street boy Charlie Davis and in 1883 John Downie, another street boy who moved into Alger's apartment. In 1881 he wrote President James A. Garfield's biography, but filled the work with contrived conversations and boyish excitements rather than facts. The book sold well. Alger was commissioned to give Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
a biographical treatment but again it was Alger the boys' novelist opting for thrills rather than facts.
In 1882, Alger's father died. Alger continued to produce tale after tale of honest boys outwitting evil, greedy squires and malicious youths. His work appeared in hardcover and paperback, and decades-old poems were published in anthologies. He led a busy life with the street boys, his Harvard classmates, and the social elite. In Massachusetts he was regarded with the same reverence as Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
. He tutored with never a whisper of scandal.
Last years: 1896–1899
In the last two decades of the 19th century, the quality of Alger's books deteriorated and his boys' works became nothing more than reruns of the plots and themes of his past. The times had changed, boys expected more, and a streak of violence entered Alger's work. In The Young Bank Messenger, for example, a woman is throttled and threatened with death – an episode that would never have occurred in his earlier work.He attended the theater and Harvard reunions, read the literary magazines, and wrote a poem at Longfellow's death in 1892. His last novel for adults The Disagreeable Woman was published under the pseudonym Julian Starr. He took pleasure in the successes of the boys he had informally adopted over the years, retained his interest in reform, accepted speaking engagements, and read portions of Ragged Dick to boys' assemblies.
His popularity dwindled in the 1890s, and with it his income. In 1896 he had (what he called) a nervous breakdown; he relocated permanently to his sister's home in South Natick, Massachusetts. In the last two years of his life he suffered from bronchitis
Bronchitis
Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...
and asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
, and died on July 18, 1899. His death was barely noticed by the newspapers.
Before his death, Alger asked Edward Stratemeyer
Edward Stratemeyer
Edward Stratemeyer was an American publisher and writer of books for children.He is one of the most prolific writers in the world, producing in excess of 1300 books himself, selling in excess of 500 million copies, and created the well-known fictional book series for juveniles including The Rover...
to complete his unfinished works. In 1901, Young Captain Jack was completed by Stratemeyer and promoted as Alger's last work. Alger once estimated that he earned only $100,000 between 1866 and 1896; at his death he had little money, leaving only small sums to family and friends. His literary work was bequeathed to his niece, to two boys he had casually adopted, and to his sister Olive Augusta who destroyed his manuscripts and his letters at his wish.
Alger's works experienced a resurgence following his death and sold in the millions. They attracted favorable critical comment, but readers lost interest at the advent of the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
. Estimates of books sold between his death and the 1920s range from seventeen million to twenty million. In 1926, however, reader interest plummeted and his major publisher ceased printing the books altogether. Surveys in 1932 and 1947 revealed very few children had read or even heard of Alger. The first Alger biography was a heavily fictionalized account by Herbert R. Mayes in 1928. Mayes later admitted the work was a fraud.
Legacy
Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished AmericansHoratio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans
The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is a nonprofit organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, that was founded in 1947 to honor the achievements of outstanding Americans who have succeeded in spite of adversity and to emphasize the importance of higher education...
has bestowed an annual award on "outstanding individuals in our society who have succeeded in the face of adversity" and scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
s "to encourage young people to pursue their dreams with determination and perseverance."
A 1982 musical, Shine!
Shine! (musical)
Shine! is a musical based on characters and situations found in the works of Horatio Alger, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy, respectively Alger's first best-seller and the one first printed in book form eighty years after it was first serialized in Argosy...
, was based on Alger's work, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy. It has been performed off and on since, including Off Broadway.
Style and themes
Gary Scharnhorst, author of Horatio Alger, Jr., describes Alger's style as "anachronistic", "often laughable", "distinctive", and "distinguished by the quality of its literary allusions." These allusions are what set his work apart from the pulps, Scharnhorst opines, and include the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, Shakespeare (in half his books), John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, Longfellow
Longfellow
Longfellow may refer to:* Longfellow, Minneapolis, United States** Longfellow , Minneapolis, United States* Longfellow, Oakland, California, United States* Longfellow , one of America's first great thoroughbred racehorses...
, Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
, Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
, Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
, William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
, and many others. "By the diversity of his allusions," Scharnhorst writes, "Alger ... both revealed his erudition and enhanced the literary quality of his work."
Scharnhorst decries six major themes in Alger's boys' books. The first, the Rise to Respectability, he observes, is evident in both his early and late books, notably in Ragged Dick whose young impoverished hero declares: "I mean to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable." His virtuous life wins him – not riches – but, more realistically, a comfortable clerical position and salary. The second major theme explores Character Strengthened Through Adversity. In Strong and Steady and Shifting for Himself, for example, the affluent heroes are reduced to poverty and forced to meet the demands of their new circumstances. Alger occasionally cited the young Abe Lincoln as a representative of this theme for his readers. The third theme is Beauty versus Money, which became central to Alger's adult fiction. Characters fall in love and marry based on the their character, talents, or intellect rather than the size of their bank accounts. In The Train Boy, for example, a wealthy heiress chooses to marry a talented but struggling artist and in The Erie Train Boy a poor woman wins her true love despite the machinations of a rich, depraved suitor.
All of Alger's boys' novels rework the same plot: a young boy struggles to escape poverty through hard work and clean living. However, it is not always the hard work and clean living that rescue the boy from his situation, but rather a wealthy older gentleman, who admires the boy as a result of some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty that the boy has performed. For example, the boy might rescue a child from an overturned carriage or find and return the man's stolen watch. Often the older man takes the boy into his home as a ward or companion and helps him find a better job (sometimes replacing a less honest or industrious boy).
According to Scharnhorst, Alger's father was "an impoverished man" who defaulted on his debts in 1844. His properties around Chelsea were seized and assigned to a local squire who held the mortgages. Scharnhorst speculates this episode in Alger's childhood accounts for the recurrent theme in his boys' books of heroes being threatened with eviction or foreclosure, and may account for Alger's "consistent espousal of environmental reform proposals". Scharnhorst writes "Financially insecure throughout his life, the younger Alger may have been active in reform organizations such as those for temperance and children's aid as a means of resolving his status-anxiety and establish his genteel credentials for leadership."
Hoyt believes that about 1880 Horatio's morality was "coarsened" (possibly through the Western tales he was writing) because "the most dreadful things were now almost casually proposed and explored in the Alger books." He continued to write of boys and their fortunes (and was met with the same enthusiasm by new generations of readers) but the violence and "the openness in the relations between the sexes and generations" were something he would never have attempted in the 1860s. The Puritan ethic was losing its grasp on America, Hoyt reminds his reader, and this ideological change was reflected in Alger's work.
Scholar John Geck of the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
libraries' The Cinderella Bibliography notes that Alger relied on "formulas for experience rather than shrewd analysis of human behavior." Geck points out that "the formulas Alger employs are culturally centered" and are "strongly didactic and work only insofar as they effectively address the social concerns and aspirations of adolescents facing the uncertainties of growing up male in a polyglot America that exudes confidence and certainty to mask its lack thereof as its population and geographical territory burgeons." The frontier had been closed when Alger was writing he observes, "[b]ut the idea of the frontier, even in urban slums, provides a kind of fairy tale orientation in which a Jack mentality
Jack tales
A collection of English folk tales centering around a character usually named "Jack," Jack tales are also popular in Appalachian folklore.The Jack in these tales is usually a weak character, sometimes a foolish one, but generally a kindly one...
can be both celebrated and critiqued ... Alger's works are intended for the young whose motivations for action are effectively shaped by the lessons they learn."
Geck notes that perception of the "pluck" characteristic of an Alger hero has changed over the decades. During the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, "the Horatio Alger plot was viewed from the perspective of the Progressive movement as a staunch defense of laissez-faire capitalism, yet at the same time criticizing the cutthroat business techniques and offering hope to a suffering young generation during the Great Depression.“ By the Atomic Age
Atomic Age
The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is a phrase typically used to delineate the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear bomb Trinity on July 16, 1945...
however "Alger's hero was no longer a poor boy who, through determination and providence rose to middle-class respectability. He was instead the crafty street urchin who through quick wits and luck rose from impoverishment to riches."
Geck observes that Alger's themes have been transformed in modern America from their original meanings into a Male Cinderella myth, and are an Americanization of the traditional Jack tales
Jack tales
A collection of English folk tales centering around a character usually named "Jack," Jack tales are also popular in Appalachian folklore.The Jack in these tales is usually a weak character, sometimes a foolish one, but generally a kindly one...
. Each story has its clever hero, its "fairy godmother", and obstacles and hindrances to the hero's rise. "However", he writes, "[T]he true Americanization of this fairy tale occurs in its subversion of this claiming of nobility; rather, the Alger hero achieves the American Dream in its nascent form, he gains a position of middle-class respectability that promises to lead wherever his motivation may take him." The reader may speculate what Cinderella achieved as Queen and what an Alger hero attained once his middle class status was stabilized and "[i]t is this commonality that fixes Horatio Alger firmly in the ranks of modern adaptors of the Cinderella myth."
Sexuality
Scharnhorst writes that Alger "exercised a certain discretion in discussing his probable homosexuality" and was known to have mentioned his sexuality only once after the Brewster incident. In 1870 the elder Henry JamesHenry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
wrote that Alger "talks freely about his own late insanity—which he in fact appears to enjoy as a subject of conversation." Although Alger was willing to speak to James, his sexuality was a closely guarded secret. According to Scharnhorst, Alger made veiled references to homosexuality in his boys' books and these references, Scharnhorst speculates, indicate Alger was "insecure with his sexual orientation." Alger wrote, for example, that it was difficult to distinguish whether Tattered Tom was a boy or a girl and in other instances he introduces foppish, effiminate, lisping "stereotypical homosexuals" who are treated with scorn and pity by others. In Silas Snobden's Office Boy, a kidnapped boy disguised as a girl is threatened with the "insane asylum" if he should reveal his actual sex. Scharnhorst believes Alger's desire to atone for his "secret sin" may have "spurred him to identify his own charitable acts of writing didactic books for boys with the acts of the charitable patrons in his books who wish to atone for a secret sin in their past by aiding the hero." Scharnhorst points out that the patron in Try and Trust, for example, conceals a "sad secret" from which he is redeemed only after saving the hero's life.
Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Trachtenberg is Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the husband of Betty Trachtenberg, former Dean of Students at Yale University, and father to Zev Trachtenberg,...
of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
points out in his introduction to the Signet Classic edition of Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick
Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's...
(1990) that Alger had tremendous sympathy for boys and discovered a calling for himself in the composition of boys' books. "He learned to consult the boy in himself," Trachtenberg writes, "[T]o transmute and recast himself—his genteel culture, his liberal patrician sympathy for underdogs, his shaky economic status as an author, and not least, his dangerous erotic attraction to boys—into his juvenile fiction. He observes that it is impossible to know whether Alger lived the life of a secret homosexual, "[b]ut there are hints that the male companionship he describes as a refuge from the streets—the cozy domestic arrangements between Dick and Fosdick, for example—may also be an erotic relationship." Trachtenberg observes that nothing prurient occurs in Ragged Dick but believes the few instances in Alger's work of two boys touching or a man and a boy touching "might arouse erotic wishes in readers prepared to entertain such fantasies." Such images, Trachtenberg believes, may imply "a positive view of homoertoicism as an alternative way of life, of living by sympathy rather than aggression." Trachtenberg concludes "[I]n Ragged Dick we see Alger plotting domestic romance, complete with a surrogate marriage of two homeless boys, as the setting for his formulaic metamorphosis of an outcast street boy into a self-respecting citizen."
Works
Alger published about 100 poems and odes, most written by 1875. In 1853–54 he published short stories with Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room CompanionGleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion
Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion was a 19th-century illustrated periodical published in Boston, Massachusetts. The magazine was founded by Frederick Gleason in 1851. It became Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in 1855, after managing editor Maturin Murray Ballou bought out the...
and The Flag of Our Nation. Other Gleason publications printed about 100 stories before he began writing for Student and Schoolmate.
Alger had many publishers over the decades. His first was A. K. Loring of Boston, and when Loring declared bankruptcy in 1881, Porter & Coates became his second and Henry T. Coates and Company his third. Other publishers include G. W. Carleton, J. S. Oglivie, John Anderson who published the biographies, A. L. Burt, Frank Munsey, Penn Publishing, and Street & Smith
Street & Smith
Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks...
. M. A. Donahue and the New York Book Company published inexpensive paperback reprints by the thousands. It is believed there were at least 60 publishers releasing Alger.
| Title | Date | Genre | Publication | Synopsis/Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Voices of the Past" | June 1849 | Poem. | Published in the Boston monthly magazine Pictorial National Library. | |
| Fair Harvard Fair Harvard "Fair Harvard" is the commencement hymn of Harvard University. Composed by the Reverend Samuel Gilman of the class of 1811 for the university's 200th anniversary in 1836, it bids the school an affectionate farewell. Of its four verses, the first and fourth are traditionally sung and the second... |
1852 | |||
| "A Welcome to May" | 1853 | Poem. | ||
| Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf | 1856 | Poems and Short Stories. | Published by Brown, Bazin and Company of Boston. | Alger's first book. |
| Nothing to Do: A Tilt at Our Best Society | 1857 | Poem. | Published anonymously by James French & Company. | Satire about the idle upper classes. |
| Nothing To Eat | 1857 | |||
| He Has Gone, and I Have Sent Him! | 1862 | Poem. | Published in Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor... Nov. 1862 |
Civil War poem. |
| Marie Bertrand | 1864 | Adult Novel. | Serialized by Street & Smith Street & Smith Street & Smith or Street & Smith Publications, Inc. was a New York City publisher specializing in inexpensive paperbacks and magazines referred to as pulp fiction and dime novels. They also published comic books and sporting yearbooks... in the New York Weekly. |
A kidnapped young woman is reunited with her mother, a French countess. |
| Frank's Campaign; or, What Boys Can Do on the Farm for the Camp | 1864 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by A. K. Loring. | First volume of the Campaign Series. Frank Frost manages the family farm when his father goes to war. Alger's first boys' book. Online at Gutenberg |
| Paul Prescott's Charge: A Story for Boys | 1865 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Second volume of the Campaign Series. A youth pays off his deceased father's debts. Online at Gutenberg |
| Charlie Codman's Cruise: A Story for Boys | 1866 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Third and final volume of the Campaign Series. A youth is shanghaied but restored to his home after adventures at sea. |
| Helen Ford | 1866 | Adult Novel. | Published by Loring. | The tribulations of a young woman in NYC before she falls in love with a promising artist. |
| Timothy Crump's Ward; or, The New Years Loan, And What Became of It | 1866 | Adult Novel. | Published anonymously by Loring. | Later reworked as Sam's Ward for the juvenile market. |
| John Maynard: A Ballad of Lake Erie | 1868 | Poem. | Published in Student and Schoolmate in January 1868 and then in various publications. | A helmsman perishes at the wheel while the ship burns. Based on an actual incident. |
| Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks Ragged Dick Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's... |
1868 | Juvenile Novel. | First serialized in twelve installments in Student and Schoolmate in 1867. Published by Loring in book format in 1868. | First volume of the Ragged Dick Series. A New York City bootblack rises to middle class respectability through hard work, honesty, and determination. Alger's all-time bestseller. Online at Gutenberg |
| Fame and Fortune; or, The Progress of Richard Hunter | 1868 | Juvenile Novel. | First serialized in twelve installments in Student and Schoolmate. Novelization published by Loring. | Second volume of the Ragged Dick Series. Continues the story of Ragged Dick and his experiences after leaving bootblacking for an office job. Online at Gutenberg. |
| Struggling Upward; or, Luke Larkin's Luck | 1868 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Small town boy helps solve bank robbery. Online at Gutenberg |
| Luck and Pluck; or, John Oakley's Inheritance | 1869 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | First volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Mark the Match Boy; or, Richard Hunter's Ward | 1869 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Third volume in the Ragged Dick Series. |
| Rough and Ready; or, Life Among the New York Newsboys | 1869 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fourth volume in the Ragged Dick Series. |
| Ralph Raymond's Heir; or, The Merchant's Crime | 1869 | Short Story. | Published under the pseudonym "Arthur Hamilton" for Gleason's Literary Companion. | |
| Ben The Luggage Boy; or, Among the Wharves | 1870 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fifth volume in the Ragged Dick Series. Boy runs away from home and struggles as a luggage carrier in New York. Online at Gutenberg. |
| Rufus and Rose; or, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready | 1870 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Sixth and final volume in the Ragged Dick Series. Sequel to Rough and Ready. Rufus and Rose try to avoid their evil stepfather. Online at Gutenberg |
| Sink or Swim; or, Harry Raymond's Resolve | 1870 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Second volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Paul the Peddler; or the Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant | 1871 | Juvenile Novel. | Serialized in Student and Schoolmate. Novelization published by Loring. | Second volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Young entrepreneur goes from selling candy to owning a necktie stand. Online at Gutenberg |
| Strong and Steady; or, Paddle Your Own Canoe | 1871 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Third volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Tattered Tom; or, The Story of a Street Arab | 1871 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | First volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Jane Lindsay is a child streetweeper. |
| "Friar Anselmo" | 1872 | Poem. | A sinning cleric finds redemption in ministering to the sick. | |
| Phil the Fiddler; or, The Story of a Young Street Musician | 1872 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Third volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Phil is an Italian boy enslaved by a padrone. |
| Slow and Sure; The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant | 1872 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fourth volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Sequel to Paul the Peddler. Paul moves from his street stall to a retail store. Online at Gutenberg |
| Strive and Succeed; or, The Progress of Walter Conrad | 1872 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fourth volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. Online at University of Florida |
| Bound to Rise; or, Up the Ladder | 1873 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Seventh volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Try and Trust; or, The Story of a Bound Boy | 1873 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fifth volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Brave and Bold; or, The Fortunes of Robert Rushton | 1874 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | First in the Brave and Bold Series. A youth searches for his sea captain father. |
| Julius; or, The Street Boy Out West | 1874 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fifth volume in the Tattered Tom Series. A boy is resettled in the west through the agency of the Children's Aid Society Children's Aid Society __notoc__The Children’s Aid Society is a private charitable organization based in New York City. It serves 150,000 children per year, providing foster care, medical and mental health services, and a wide range of educational, recreational and advocacy services through dozens of community centers,... . |
| Risen from the Ranks; or, Harry Walton's Success | 1874 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Sixth volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. |
| Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving | 1875 | Poems. | ||
| Herbert Carter's Legacy; or, The Inventor's Son | 1875 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Eighth and last volume in the Luck and Pluck Series. A boy and his mother thwart a Squire foreclosing on their cottage. |
| Jack's Ward; or, The Boy Guardian | 1875 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Second volume in the Brave and Bold Series. Reworking of Timothy Crump's Ward. |
| Seeking His Fortune, And Other Dialogues | 1875 | |||
| St. Nicholas | 1875 | |||
| The Young Outlaw; or, Adrift In The Streets | 1875 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Sixth volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Sam Barlow resists reform. |
| Sam's Chance; and How He Improved It | 1876 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Seventh volume in the Tattered Tom Series. Sequel to The Young Outlaw. Sam improves and finds an office job. |
| Shifting for Himself; or, Gilbert Greyson's Fortunes | 1876 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Third volume in the Brave and Bold Series. A rich youth loses his fortune. |
| Life of Edwin Forrest | 1877 | Biography | ||
| The New Schoolma'am; or, A Summer in North Sparta | 1877 | Adult Novella. | Published anonymously. | A privileged young woman changes her name to teach school in New Hampshire New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian... . |
| Wait and Hope; or, Ben Bradford's Motto | 1877 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Fourth and last volume in the Brave and Bold Series. A mill boy is laid off but remains optimistic about his future. |
| The Western Boy; or, The Road to Success | 1878 | |||
| The Young Adventurer; or, Tom's Trip Across the Plains | 1878 | Juvenile novel. | Published by Loring. | First volume of the Pacific series. Western setting. A boy head west to find gold and help pay the mortgage. |
| The Telegraph Boy | 1879 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Eighth and last volume in the Tattered Tom Series. A penniless boy finds a job as a telegram messenger boy. Last of the fourteen social reform novels begun with Ragged Dick Ragged Dick Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's... . Online at University of Florida |
| The Young Miner; or, Tom Nelson in California | 1879 | Juvenile Novel. | Published by Loring. | Western theme. Second volume of the Pacific series. |
| Tony the Hero | 1880 | |||
| The Young Explorer; or, Among the Sierras | 1880 | Juvenile novel. | Published by Loring. | Western theme. Third volume in the Pacific series |
| From Canal Boy to President; or, The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield | 1881 | Biography | Published by John R. Anderson | |
| Ben's Nugget; or, A Boy's Search for Fortune | 1882 | Juvenile novel. | Published by Porter & Coates after Loring declares bankruptcy. | Western theme. Fourth and final volume in the Pacific series. |
| From Farm Boy to Senator: Being the History of the Boyhood and Manhood of Daniel Webster | 1882 | Biography | Published by J. S. Ogilvie and Company. | Originally published in serialization by Street & Smith, 1860s. |
| Abraham Lincoln: the Backwoods Boy; or, How A Young Rail-Splitter Became President | 1883 | Biography | Published by John R. Anderson. | |
| The Train Boy | 1883 | |||
| The Young Circus Rider; or, The Mystery of Robert Rudd | 1883 | |||
| Dan, the Detective | 1884 | |||
| Do and Dare; or A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune | 1884 | |||
| Hector's Inheritance; or, The Boys of Smith Institute | 1885 | |||
| Helping Himself; or, Grant Thornton's Ambition | 1886 | Online at UFL | ||
| Frank Fowler, the Cash Boy | 1887 | |||
| Number 91; or, The Adventures of a New York Telegraph Boy | 1887 | |||
| The Store Boy; or, The Fortunes of Ben Barclay | 1887 | |||
| Bob Burton; or, The Young Ranchman of the Missouri | 1888 | |||
| The Errand Boy; or, How Phil Brent Won Success | 1888 | |||
| Tom Temple's Career | 1888 | |||
| Tom Thatcher's Fortune | 1888 | |||
| Tom Tracy | 1888 | |||
| The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus | 1888 | Juvenile novel. | Circus theme suggested by P. T. Barnum P. T. Barnum Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.... . First serialized in The Golden Argosy Argosy (magazine) Argosy was an American pulp magazine, published by Frank Munsey. It is generally considered to be the first American pulp magazine. The magazine began as a general information periodical entitled The Golden Argosy, targeted at the boys adventure market.-Launch of Argosy:In late September 1882,... . |
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| Luke Walton; or, The Chicago Newsboy | 1889 | |||
| The Erie Train Boy | 1890 | |||
| Five Hundred Dollars; or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret | 1890 | |||
| Mark Stanton | 1890 | |||
| Ned Newton; or, The Fortunes of a New York Bootblack | 1890 | Juvenile novel. | First serialized in The Golden Argosy Argosy (magazine) Argosy was an American pulp magazine, published by Frank Munsey. It is generally considered to be the first American pulp magazine. The magazine began as a general information periodical entitled The Golden Argosy, targeted at the boys adventure market.-Launch of Argosy:In late September 1882,... . |
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| A New York Boy | 1890 | |||
| The Odds Against Him; or, Carl Crawford's Experience | 1890 | |||
| Dean Dunham; or, The Waterford Mystery | 1891 | |||
| Digging for Gold. A Story of California | 1892 | |||
| The Young Boatman of Pine Point | 1892 | |||
| Cast Upon the Breakers | 1893 | |||
| Facing the World; or, The Haps and Mishaps of Harry Vane | 1893 | |||
| In a New World; or, Among the Gold-Fields of Australia | 1893 | |||
| Only an Irish Boy; Or, Andy Burke's Fortunes and Misfortunes | 1894 | |||
| Victor Vane, The Young Secretary | 1894 | |||
| The Disagreeable Woman; A Social Mystery | 1895 | Adult Novel | G. W. Carleton | Alger's last adult novel. Only one copy is known and held in the Library of Congress. |
| Frank Hunter's Peril | 1896 | |||
| The Young Salesman | 1896 | |||
| Frank and Fearless; or, The Fortunes of Jasper Kent | 1897 | |||
| Walter Sherwood's Probation | 1897 | |||
| A Boy's Fortune; or, The Strange Adventures of Ben Baker | 1898 | |||
| The Young Bank Messenger | 1898 | Online at Gutenberg. | ||
| Jed the Poorhouse Boy | 1899 | Juvenile novel. | A poorhouse boy is discovered to be an English baronet. | |
| Mark Mason's Victory; or, The Trials and Triumphs of a Telegraph Boy | 1899 | |||
| Rupert's Ambition | 1899 | |||
| Silas Snobden's Office Boy | 1899 | Doubleday | Originally serialized by Argosy Argosy (magazine) Argosy was an American pulp magazine, published by Frank Munsey. It is generally considered to be the first American pulp magazine. The magazine began as a general information periodical entitled The Golden Argosy, targeted at the boys adventure market.-Launch of Argosy:In late September 1882,... under the pseudonym Arthur Lee Putnam. |
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| A Debt of Honor. The Story of Gerald Lane's Success in the Far West | 1900 | |||
| Falling in With Fortune; or, The Experiences of a Young Secretary | 1900 | |||
| Out for Business; or, Robert Frost's Strange Career | 1900 | |||
| Ben Bruce. Scenes in the Life of a Bowery Newsboy | 1901 | |||
| Lester's Luck | 1901 | |||
| Nelson the Newsboy; or, Afloat in New York | 1901 | |||
| Tom Brace: Who He Was and How He Fared | 1901 | |||
| Young Captain Jack; or, The Son of a Soldier | 1901 | Juvenile Novel | Originally serialized in Golden Hours. Promoted as Alger's last work. Completed by Edward Stratemeyer Edward Stratemeyer Edward Stratemeyer was an American publisher and writer of books for children.He is one of the most prolific writers in the world, producing in excess of 1300 books himself, selling in excess of 500 million copies, and created the well-known fictional book series for juveniles including The Rover... as Arthur M. Winfield. |
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| Adrift in the City; or, Oliver Conrad's Plucky Fight | 1902 | |||
| Andy Grant's Pluck | 1902 | |||
| A Rolling Stone; or, The Adventures of a Wanderer | 1902 | |||
| Striving for Fortune; or, Walter Griffith's Trials and Successes | 1902 | |||
| Tom Turner's Legacy | 1902 | |||
| The World Before Him | 1902 | |||
| Bernard Brooks' Adventures. The Story of a Brave Boy's Trials | 1903 | |||
| Chester Rand; or, A New Path to Fortune | 1903 | |||
| Forging Ahead | 1903 | |||
| Adrift in New York; or, Tom and Florence Braving the World | 1904 | |||
| Finding a Fortune | 1904 | |||
| Jerry the Backwoods Boy; or, The Parkhurst Treasure | 1904 | |||
| Lost at Sea; or, Robert Roscoe's Strange Cruise | 1904 | |||
| From Farm to Fortune; or Nat Nason's Strange Experience | 1905 | |||
| Making His Mark | 1905 | |||
| Mark Manning's Mission. The Story of a Shoe Factory Boy | 1905 | |||
| The Young Book Agent; or, Frank Hardy's Road to Success | 1905 | |||
| Joe the Hotel Boy, or Winning Out by Pluck | 1906 | |||
| Randy of the River; or, The Adventures of a Young Deckhand | 1906 | |||
| The Young Musician; or, Fighting His Way | 1906 | |||
| Ben Logan's Triumph; or, The Boys of Boxwood Academy | 1908 | |||
| Wait and Win. The Story of Jack Drummond's Pluck | 1908 | |||
| Robert Coverdale's Struggle; or, On the Wave of Success | 1910 | |||
| Joe's Luck; or Always Wide Awake | 1913 | |||
| The Cousin's Conspiracy | ||||
| In Search of Treasure. The Story of Guy's Eventful Voyage | ||||
Research resources
- The Papers of Horatio Alger, 1880-1953 (990 pieces) are housed at the Huntington Library.
- H. Jack Barker Papers, undated (3 liner feet) are housed at Emory UniversityEmory UniversityEmory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
's Manuscripts, Archives, & Rare Book Library. - Seligman Family papers, 1877-1934 (0.8 linear feet) are housed at American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, Ohio).
Further reading
- Nackenoff, Carol. "The Horatio Alger Myth". In Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II. 1997. Gerster, Patrick, and Cords, Nicholas. (editors.) Brandywine Press, St. James, NY. ISBN 1-881-089-97-5
External links
- Works by or about Horatio Alger at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books original editions color illustrated) (plain text and HTML) - The Complete "Ragged Dick" Series on kindle.
- Horatio Alger Books On-Line 2 18 of Alger's works (with A Fancy of Hers, unique to this collection)
- Horatio Alger Books On-Line 3 3 of Alger's works (with The Maniac's Secret, unique to this collection)
- Horatio Alger research page at the University of Rochester
- Horatio Alger Society Home Page
- The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans
- The Horatio Alger Collection at Northern Illinois University
- The Horatio Alger Fellowship for the Study of American Popular Culture at Northern Illinois University