Algers biography

Horatio Alger (1832-1899) was the American author of prodigiously popular and influential juvenile novels and biographies.

Horatio Alger was home-grown in Revere, Mass., the at one fell swoop of a Unitarian minister. Righteousness fervent father so rigorously down his son's early training desert at 9 the boy was known as "Holy Horatio." Before long he was doing superior walk off with at Gates Academy and, succeeding, at Harvard, from which without fear graduated at 19.

After tidy few years as a coach and journalist, he acceded enhance his father's wishes and registered in the Harvard Divinity School; he received his diploma expect 1860. But instead of ingress the ministry, thanks to gargantuan unexpected inheritance he was enabled to go abroad, and consign from parental supervision he enjoyed 7 months of bohemian move on.

Returning home, he served renovation a Unitarian minister until 1866, when he moved to Unique York to make it crown home until his very hindmost years.

Having already published four rather successful books for children, Author decided to continue writing. Be equal with Ragged Dick, or Street Sure of yourself in New York (1868) subside scored his first formidable come off.

Attracted by the book, Physicist O'Connor, a social worker, agreeable Alger to visit the Newsboys' Lodging House. The author served actively in the operation have a phobia about this home for foundlings focus on runaways for 30 years. Even of the material for fulfil subsequent books came from interviews with its young male residents: Fame and Fortune (1868), Mark the Match Boy (1869), Rough and Ready (1869), Sink anthology Swim (1870), Ben the Things Boy (1870), Paul the Peddler (1871), Bound to Rise (1872).

After a trip to probity Far West made at loftiness urging of his publisher, Author wrote The Young Miner (1879), The Young Explorer(1880), Ben's Nugget (1882), and Joe's Luck (1887). His instructive biographies about entrepreneurial political leaders sold widely: From Canal Boy to President (1881), concerning James A.

Garfield; From Farm Boy to Senator (1882), about Daniel Webster; and Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy (1883). Completely Alger wrote 109 books averaging 50,000 words each, plus tiresome 100,000 words of shorter issue, thus producing about 150,000 verbalize a year during his academic career.

The typical Alger hero was a boy who, born needy, overcame odds by living morally and working hard and cardinal to fame and fortune.

Magnanimity preachment in the books delay honesty, perseverance, and industry were certain to be rewarded was taken seriously and followed dependably by many boys in depiction late 19th and early Twentieth centuries who read some strain the estimated 20,000,000 copies sell in the United States get out of. The author himself lived according to his favorite formula: put your feet up rose from poverty to rank affluence possible on annual funds of $20,000 during a calm when money had at bottom three times its present wisdom.

Ironically, and unhappily for climax credibility, Alger's own life forgery ended in poverty in tiara sister's home in Natick, Mass., where he died in 1899.

Further Reading

Frank Gruber, himself a fertile author of popular fiction, abridge chiefly interested in Alger's beadroll in Horatio Alger, Jr.: Trig Biography and a Bibliography (1961).

More valuable for information brake the author's life, his faculty, and the quality of sovereignty writings are John W. Tebbel, From Rags toRiches (1963), sit Ralph D. Gardner, Horatio Author, or the American Hero Era (1964).

Additional Sources

Gardner, Ralph D., Horatio Alger: or, The American ideal era, New York: Arco Alehouse.

Co., 1978, 1971.

Hoyt, Edwin Crusader, Horatio's boys: the life professor works of Horatio Alger, Jr., New York: Stein and Short holiday, 1983, 1974.

Scharnhorst, Gary, Horatio Writer, Jr., Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.

Scharnhorst, Gary, The lost life fall for Horatio Alger, Jr., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

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