Horatio Alger Jr. published about 100 poems and odes, most written by 1875. In 1853–54, he published short stories with Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion and The Flag of Our Nation.Other Gleason publications printed about 100 stories before he began writing for The Student and Schoolmate.. Alger had many publishers over the decades.
H oratio Alger Jr. was the biggest American media star of his day. Though nineteenth-century best-seller lists were impressionistic—and the sale of 10,000 volumes was deemed a publishing triumph in those days—readers bought at least 200 million copies of his books, placing him in the Stephen King category.
( / ˈældʒər /; January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was an American writer of young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through good works .
By the time he died in 1899, Alger had published around a hundred volumes. He is buried in Natick, Massachusetts. Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans has awarded scholarships and prizes to deserving individuals.
Alger secured his literary niche in 1868 with the publication of his fourth book, Ragged Dick, the story of a poor bootblack 's rise to middle-class respectability. This novel was a huge success.
All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme: a teenage boy improves his circumstances by virtuous behavior. There is a "Horatio Alger myth" that the boy becomes wealthy through hard work, but this is inaccurate. In the actual stories, invariably the cause of success is an accident that works to the boy's advantage after he conducts himself according to traditional virtues such as honesty, charity, and altruism. The boy might return a large sum of lost money or rescue someone from an overturned carriage. This brings the boy—and his plight—to the attention of a wealthy individual. In one story, for example, a young boy is almost run over by streetcar and a homeless orphan youth snatches him out of the way to safety. The young boy's father turns out to be wealthy and adopts the orphan rescuer.
All of Alger's novels have similar plots: a 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 rescues a child from an overturned carriage or finds and returns 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 less industrious boy.
Alger's works received favorable comments and experienced a resurgence following his death. By 1926, he sold around 20 million copies in the United States. 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 published in 1928 by Herbert R. Mayes, who later admitted the work was a fraud.
Childhood: 1832–1847. Alger was born on January 13, 1832, in the New England coastal town of Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of Horatio Alger Sr., a Unitarian minister, and Olive Augusta Fenno. He had many connections with the New England Puritan aristocracy of the early 19th century. He was the descendant of Pilgrim Fathers Robert Cushman, ...
( / ˈældʒər /; January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was an American writer of young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through good works .
By the time he died in 1899, Alger had published around a hundred volumes. He is buried in Natick, Massachusetts. Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans has awarded scholarships and prizes to deserving individuals.
Alger secured his literary niche in 1868 with the publication of his fourth book, Ragged Dick, the story of a poor bootblack 's rise to middle-class respectability. This novel was a huge success.
All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme: a teenage boy improves his circumstances by virtuous behavior. There is a "Horatio Alger myth" that the boy becomes wealthy through hard work, but this is inaccurate. In the actual stories, invariably the cause of success is an accident that works to the boy's advantage after he conducts himself according to traditional virtues such as honesty, charity, and altruism. The boy might return a large sum of lost money or rescue someone from an overturned carriage. This brings the boy—and his plight—to the attention of a wealthy individual. In one story, for example, a young boy is almost run over by streetcar and a homeless orphan youth snatches him out of the way to safety. The young boy's father turns out to be wealthy and adopts the orphan rescuer.
All of Alger's novels have similar plots: a 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 rescues a child from an overturned carriage or finds and returns 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 less industrious boy.
Alger's works received favorable comments and experienced a resurgence following his death. By 1926, he sold around 20 million copies in the United States. 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 published in 1928 by Herbert R. Mayes, who later admitted the work was a fraud.
Childhood: 1832–1847. Alger was born on January 13, 1832, in the New England coastal town of Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of Horatio Alger Sr., a Unitarian minister, and Olive Augusta Fenno. He had many connections with the New England Puritan aristocracy of the early 19th century. He was the descendant of Pilgrim Fathers Robert Cushman, ...