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Horatio Alger Jr. (; January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was an American author who wrote young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to middle-class security and comfort through good works. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on the United States from 1868 through to his death in 1899.
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. His many books that followed were essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured : the valiant, hardworking, honest youth; the noble mysterious stranger; the snobbish youth; and the evil, greedy squire. In the 1870s, Alger's fiction was growing stale. His publisher suggested he tour the Western United States for fresh material to incorporate into his fiction. Alger took a trip to California, but the trip had little effect on his writing: he remained mired in the staid theme of "poor boy makes good". The backdrops of these novels, however, became the Western United States, rather than the urban environments of the Northeastern United States.
He had many connections with the New England Puritan aristocracy of the early 19th century. He was the descendant of Pilgrim Fathers Robert Cushman, Thomas Cushman, and William Bassett. He was also the descendant of Sylvanus Lazell, a Minutemen and brigadier general in the War of 1812, and Edmund Lazell, a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1788.Scharnhorst 1985, pp. 5–6.
Alger's siblings Olive Augusta and James were born in 1833 and 1836, respectively. A disabled sister, Annie, was born in 1840, and a brother, Francis, in 1842.Alger 2008, p. 277. Alger was a precocious boy afflicted with myopia and asthma,Scharnhorst 1985, p. 10. but Alger Sr. decided early that his eldest son would one day enter the ministry. To that end, Alger's father tutored him in classical studies and allowed him to observe the responsibilities of ministering to parishioners.Hoyt 1974, pp. 10–11.
Alger began attending Chelsea Grammar School in 1842,Hoyt 1974, p. 14. but by December 1844 his father's financial troubles had worsened considerably. In search of a better salary, he moved the family to Marlborough, Massachusetts, an agricultural town 25 miles west of Boston, where he was installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Society in January 1845 with a salary sufficient to meet his needs.Scharnhorst 1985, pp. 11–13. Alger attended Gates Academy, a local preparatory school, and completed his studies at age 15. He published his earliest literary works in local newspapers.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 14.
Alger thrived in the highly disciplined and regimented Harvard environment, winning scholastic and other prestigious awards.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 17. His genteel poverty and less-than-aristocratic heritage, however, barred him from membership in the Hasty Pudding Club and the Porcellian Club.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 21. In 1849, he became a professional writer when he sold two essays and a poem to the Pictorial National Library, a Boston magazine.Hoyt 1974, p. 18. He began reading 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 Society honors in 1852, eighth in a class of 88.Scharnhorst 1985, pp. 18–23.
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.Scharnhorst 1985, pp. 26–27. He briefly attended Harvard Divinity School in 1853, possibly to be reunited with a romantic interest,Scharnhorst 1985, pp. 27–28. but he left in November 1853 to take a job as an assistant editor at the Boston Daily Advertiser.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 29. 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 directing the 1856 summer session at Deerfield Academy.Hoyt 1974, pp. 24, 28.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 33.
His first book, Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf, a collection of short pieces, was published in 1856, and his second book, Nothing to Do: A Tilt at Our Best Society, a lengthy satirical poem, was published in 1857.Hoyt 1974, pp. 27–28, 30–33. He attended Harvard Divinity School from 1857 to 1860 and, upon graduation, toured Europe.Scharnhorst 1980, "Chronology". In the spring of 1861, he returned to a nation in the throes of the Civil War.Scharnhorst 1985, p. 54. Exempted from military service for health reasons in July 1863, he wrote in support of the Union cause and associated with New England intellectuals. He was elected an officer in the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1863.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 26.
His first novel, Marie Bertrand: The Felon's Daughter, was serialization 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.Hoyt 1974, pp. 40–48. Alger initially wrote for adult magazines, including Harper's Magazine and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, but a friendship with William Taylor Adams, a boys' author, led him to write for the young.Hoyt 1974, pp. 49–50.
In January 1867, the first of 12 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.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 34. It proved to be his best-selling work. After Ragged Dick he wrote almost entirely for boys,Scharnhorst 1980, p. 48 and he signed a contract with publisher Loring for a Ragged Dick Series.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 35.
In spite of the series' success, Alger was on financially uncertain ground and tutored the five sons of the international banker Joseph Seligman. He wrote serials for Young IsraelScharnhorst 1980, p. 35–36. and lived in the Seligman home until 1876.Alger 2008, p. 279. In 1875, Alger produced the serial Shifting for Himself and Sam's Chance, a sequel to The Young Outlaw.Hoyt 1974, pp. 184–186. It was evident in these books that Alger had grown stale. Profits suffered, and he headed West for new material at Loring's behest, arriving in California in February 1877.Hoyt 1974, p. 187. He enjoyed a reunion with his brother James in San Francisco and returned to New York late in 1877 on a schooner that sailed around Cape Horn.Hoyt 1974, pp. 187–188. He wrote a few lackluster books in the following years, rehashing his established themes, but this time the tales were played before a Western background rather than an urban one.Hoyt 1974, p. 190.
In New York, Alger continued to tutor the town's aristocratic youth and to rehabilitate boys from the streets.Hoyt 1974, p. 199. He was writing both urban and Western-themed tales. In 1879, for example, he published The District Messenger Boy and The Young Miner.Hoyt 1974, p. 201. In 1877, Alger's fiction became a target of librarians concerned about sensational juvenile fiction. An effort was made to remove his works from public collections, but the debate was only partially successful, defeated by the renewed interest in his work after his death.Nackenoff 1994, pp. 250–257.
In 1881, Alger informally adopted Charlie Davis, a street boy, and another, John Downie, in 1883; they lived in Alger's apartment. In 1881, he wrote a biography of President James A. Garfield but filled the work with contrived conversations and boyish excitements rather than facts. The book sold well. Alger was commissioned to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln, but again it was Alger the boys' novelist opting for thrills rather than facts.Hoyt 1974, pp. 207–210.
In 1882, Alger's father died. Alger continued to produce stories 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 street boys, Harvard classmates, and the social elite. In Massachusetts, he was regarded with the same reverence as Harriet Beecher Stowe.
He attended the theater and Harvard reunions, read literary magazines, and wrote a poem at Longfellow's death in 1882. His last novel for adults, The Disagreeable Woman, was published under the pseudonym Julian Starr.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 45. 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—and income—dwindled in the 1890s. In 1896, he had what he called a "nervous breakdown"; he relocated permanently to his sister's home in South Natick, Massachusetts.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 46.
He suffered from bronchitis and asthma for two years. He died on July 18, 1899, at the home of his sister.Hoyt 1974, p. 232. His death was barely noticed. He is buried in the family lot at Glenwood Cemetery, South Natick, Massachusetts.Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 811). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Before his death, Alger asked Edward Stratemeyer to complete his unfinished works.Alger 2008, p. 280. 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;Scharnhorst 1980, p. 47. 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, according to his wishes.Hoyt 1974, pp. 19, 252.
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.Nation, 17 February 1932, 186 & New York Times 13 January 1947 23:2–3 The first Alger biography was a heavily fictionalized account published in 1928 by Herbert Mayes, who later admitted the work was a fraud.Scharnhorst 1980, p. 141.Hoyt 1974, p. 251.
In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she describes her childhood belief that he was "the greatest writer in the world" and envy that all his protagonists were boys.
In 1982, to mark his 150th birthday, the Children's Aid Society held a celebration. Helen M. Gray, the executive director of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, presented a selection of Alger's books to Philip Coltoff, the Children's Aid Society executive director.
A 1982 musical, Shine!, was based on Alger's work, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy. Shine! The Horatio Alger Musical
In 2015, many of Alger's books were published as illustrated paperbacks and ebooks under the title "Stories of Success" by Horatio Alger. In addition, Alger's books were offered as dramatic audiobooks by the same publisher.
Scharnhorst describes six major themes in Alger's boys' books. The first, the Rise to Respectability, he observes, is evident in both his early and his late books, notably Ragged Dick, whose impoverished young 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.Scharnhorst 1980, pp. 75–76. The second major theme is 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 on the basis of 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.Scharnhorst 1980, pp. 76–78. Other major themes include the Old World versus the New.
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.
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 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."Scharnhorst 1980, p. 18.
Alger scholar Edwin P. Hoyt notes that Alger's morality "coarsened" around 1880, possibly influenced by the Western tales he was writing, because "the most dreadful things were now almost casually proposed and explored". Although he continued to write for boys, Alger explored subjects like violence and "openness in the relations between the sexes and generations"; Hoyt attributes this shift to the decline of Puritan ethics in America.Hoyt 1974, p. 207.
Scholar John Geck notes that Alger relied on "formulas for experience rather than shrewd analysis of human behavior", and that these formulas were "culturally centered" and "strongly didactic". Although the frontier society was a thing of the past during Alger's career, Geck contends that "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". He claims that Alger's intended audience were youths 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 Progressivism 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, "the 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 "it is this commonality that fixes Horatio Alger firmly in the ranks of modern adaptors of the Cinderella myth".
Alan Trachtenberg, in his introduction to the Signet Classic edition of Ragged Dick (1990), points out 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, "to 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".Alger 1990, p. ix. He observes that it is impossible to know whether Alger lived the life of a secret homosexual, "but 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 homoeroticism as an alternative way of life, of living by sympathy rather than aggression". Trachtenberg concludes, "in 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".Trachtenberg 1990, pp. ix–x.
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