Horatio Alger

Horatio Alger Jr. (/January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) is 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 hard work, determination, courage, and honesty.

His writings are characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which have a formative effect on the United States during the Gilded Age.

All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme, known as the "Horatio Alger myth": a teenage boy works hard to escape poverty.

Often it is not hard work that rescues the boy from his fate but rather some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty.

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.

Alger secures 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 is a huge success.

His many books that follow are essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured stock characters: the valiant, hard-working, honest youth; the noble mysterious stranger; the snobbish youth; and the evil, greedy squire.

In the 1870s, Alger's fiction is growing stale.

His publisher suggests he tour the American West for fresh material to incorporate into his fiction.

Alger takes a trip to California, but the trip has little effect on his writing: he remains mired in the tired theme of "poor boy makes good."

The backdrops of these novels, however, becomse the American West rather than the urban environments of the northeastern United States.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Alger's moral tone coarsens with the change in boys' tastes.

Sensational thrills are wanted by the public.

'The Protestant work ethic has loosened its grip on the United States, and violence, murder, and other sensational themes enter Alger's works.

Public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young.

They are briefly successful, but interest in Alger's novels is renewed in the first decades of the twentieth century, and they sell in the thousands.

By the time he dies in 1899, Alger has published around a hundred volumes.

He is buried in Natick, Massachusetts.

From 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans will award scholarships and prizes to deserving individuals.

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