Ragged Dick
or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks
“[Alger] was an utterly American artist . . . and the truth of his books is the truth of the power of the wish. . . . Alger was perhaps American capitalism’s greatest and most effective propagandist.”–Richard Wright Introduction by David K. Shipler Written to inspire schoolboys to strive for “honesty, industry, frugality, and a worthy ambition,” the novels of Horatio Alger (1832-99) are infused with great humanity, broad humor, and a surprisingly sophisticated view of Gilded Age propriety. Central to Alger’s philosophy is the notion that heroes like Ragged Dick, a poor boot-black, manage to get ahead by dint of hard work, resourcefulness, luck, pluck, and fair play. Alger’s upwardly mobile heroes have become paragons of…
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September 13, 2005Horatio Alger, Jr. was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1832, the son of a Unitarian minister. He received a strict upbringing and was educated for a life in the church, graduating from Harvard in 1852. After leaving Harvard, Alger, to his father's disappointment, took a job as a historian in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and later worked as a teacher at a boys' boarding school in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. He traveled in Europe for a year, and then returned to the United States in 1857 to complete his studies at the Harvard Divinity School. In 1864, Alger was ordained a minister at the First Parish Unitarian Church of Brewster on Cape Cod. Sixteen months later, however, he was dismissed from the pulpit after being…
