Horatio Alger

American novelist

• Born: January 13, 1832
• Birthplace: Chelsea, Massachusetts
• Died: July 18, 1899
• Place of death: Natick, Massachusetts

Alger was a writer of books for juveniles that popularized business as a career for young boys, while at the same time motivating the poor to work hard in the hope of eventual success. Because of the popularity of his books, real-life tales of poor people who became successful life became known as “Horatio Alger stories.”

Early Life

Horatio Alger, Jr. (AL-jihr) spent most of his life in Massachusetts and traced his ancestry to Puritans who came to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621. His father, Horatio Alger, Sr., was a graduate of the Harvard Theological School and the minister at the First Congregational Church in Chelsea, Massachusetts. His mother, Olive Augusta Fenno, had married his father just ten months before the birth of Horatio, Jr. The ministerial stipend was not large; thus, the family was usually in debt. In 1844, when Horatio, Jr., was twelve, his father went bankrupt. For a time his father turned to farming, but he eventually went back into the ministry and later served in the Massachusetts state legislature.

Alger was a sickly child; he was nearsighted and had asthma. In 1848, at the age of sixteen, he was admitted to Harvard College. The first publication for which he received payment came in 1849 when a Boston magazine bought a poem he had penned. During his senior year, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and he graduated in 1852. Although he immediately planned to enter the Harvard Divinity School, a writing job arose, and he decided to become a journalist—a career he was to follow for five years. In the fall of 1857, he entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1860. Alger was soon named to the pulpit of the Unitarian Church in Brewster, Massachusetts. Because his church duties were often light, he spent a great deal of time writing stories for children, which was not a praiseworthy sideline in the eyes of his parishioners.

Alger apparently had a homosexual relationship with one or more of the young boys in his church. Once this came to light in 1866, he was forced not only to resign his church but also to resign the ministry. The Unitarians agreed to keep the situation quiet if Alger agreed to never again serve as a minister. He then moved to New York, where he became a full-time writer. His personal relations with boys never again came into question. Many authors, however, have speculated that Alger’s love for boys was a vicarious motivation that surfaced in his writing. From the event, Alger learned discretion and was never again accused of a homosexual relationship, but he also never allowed himself to be in the public eye. His books and short stories were all that people ever really knew about the man during the remainder of his lifetime.

Life’s Work

In middle age, at a time when he had been relatively unsuccessful in other endeavors, Alger began writing books for juveniles. He was best known as a writer of books in which the heroes started out poor and ended up wealthy. Among his more popular titles were Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks (1868), Luck and Pluck: Or, John Oakley’s Inheritance (1869), and Tattered Tom: Or, The Story of a Street Arab (1871). His heroes were typically newsboys, shoe shiners, match sellers, farmers, or luggage carriers who rose to fame and fortune via their own efforts, bravery, and courage. His young entrepreneurs earned and spent their wealth honestly. His books were particularly popular during the Progressive Era because they satisfied the Progressives’ desire to reform business and government through a return to morality.

Alger’s adult life was ostensibly dull, as he did almost nothing but write. In addition to writing more than 120 books, he published hundreds of short stories and over one hundred poems. Many of his short stories were written under pseudonyms. His writing was not particularly difficult in that it was formulaic fiction that required little research. Short stories were turned into serials, and serials were turned into books. In one sense, Alger was a self-plagiarizer because he used the same work over and over. His first book, Bertha’s Christmas Vision , was published in 1856. His fourth book, and first financially successful volume, was Paul Prescott’s Charge in 1865.

Alger’s writings captured the spirit of the United States. In his books, the reader could hear the turmoil of the city streets and the rattle of the milk pails on the farms. He portrayed the ambitious soul of the nation. Manly forbearance was an important part of Alger’s writings; it was okay to fight or even shoot someone, but only after Alger had made it clear that there was no other possibility. Money, contracts, and instruments such as mortgages were often discussed in detail—usually with the hero eventually paying off the mortgage for his widowed mother.

Alger has been criticized at times because the event that moves the hero from destitution to wealth is often somewhat fortuitous, such as a gift arriving in the mail from a long-lost aunt, an inheritance from a little-known relative, or a payment received for an invention that had not been discussed previously in the book. Despite these criticisms, the message was that hard work and pluck on the part of the hero was the key to prosperity.

Alger’s books, although popular, were not huge sellers during his lifetime. He had few assets at the time of his death in July, 1899. It was only after his death, when the books were reissued in inexpensive editions, that he became a household name. His books remained popular until about 1920. A total of at least seventy different publishers issued Alger’s books, some of which were first editions and some of which were reprints. Alger was so prolific that one or two publishers could not handle all of his work. Approximately forty different publishers issued reprints of his books during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The reprints sold, in hardcover, for as little as ten cents each—a price that allowed almost every child to have access to Alger’s work. It has been estimated that more than 400 million copies of his novels have been sold.

It was not until 1926 that the term “Horatio Alger hero” first appeared in print as a synonym for someone who had gone from rags to riches. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, Alger’s plots were again hailed as the way out of hard times. Alger’s thesis was that virtue and hard work were always rewarded, and newspapers often published articles to the effect that if Americans would work harder, the Depression would cease to exist. In 1939, on the fortieth anniversary of Alger’s death, New York governor Herbert Lehman essentially prescribed Alger as a home remedy for the economic ills afflicting the nation.

In 1947, a New York Times editorial attributed the American disdain for communism and socialism to Alger; because so many Americans believed that every poor boy had a chance to succeed, they would not fall for the rantings of the anarchists and socialists who saw nothing but evil in capitalism. Readers of Alger, however, knew better; every newsboy had the potential to become rich and famous. Perhaps the following review from Publishers Weekly is an overstatement, but it indicates the mind-set with which Alger is remembered: “To Call Horatio Alger, Jr., America’s most influential writer may seem like an overstatement… but… only Benjamin Franklin meant as much to the formation of the American popular mind.”

Significance

Horatio Alger was a private person who shunned publicity throughout his life, perhaps fearing that his reputation would be harmed if an unsavory incident from his early adulthood were to be exposed. Thus, he was one of the most widely read writers in the United States during his lifetime, yet he was unknown. To deter future biographers, he even ordered his sister to destroy all of his personal papers following his death, which she did. Even some documents in the hands of others mysteriously disappeared in the years following his death.

Other writers adapted Alger’s fiction formula for their own uses. Edward Stratemeyer, who dominated the juvenile fiction market between 1910 and 1930 (and who completed eleven of Alger’s book manuscripts that were left unfinished at Alger’s death), also used moral heroism and economic success in his books. Owen Wister, the author of The Virginian (1902), applied the technique to Western stories.

More than a century after his death, Alger’s name stands as a symbol for central American values. It is not because his books are still widely known and read but because his name has entered the language as a synonym for a success story. His books have been lampooned and maligned, but as symbols they are so pervasive in American culture that they have far outlived a man who was undoubtedly nothing more than a hack writer.

In 1940, authors Nathanael West and Boris Ingster summarized Alger’s life by writing, “only fools laugh at Horatio Alger, and his poor boys who make good. The wiser man who thinks twice about that sterling author will realize that Alger is to America what Homer was to the Greeks.” Indeed, Alger’s stories may not have been based on fact, but they told about the way Americans wanted life to be. Today, Alger would probably be a motivational speaker or writer of some sort who would encourage people to be the best that they could be and promising that success would follow. He has been called one of the great mythmakers of the modern world. There is even an award for successful individuals named the Horatio Alger Award. Historian Henry Steele Commager stated that Alger probably exerted more influence on the national character than any other writer except perhaps Mark Twain.

Alger’s Novels About Success

Alger wrote more than 120 novels, mostly about boys rising from poverty and hardship to great success through pluck and fortitude. This selection of his titles reveals his favorite themes.

1868

• Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks

1868

• Fame and Fortune: Or, The Progress of Richard Hunter

1869

• Luck and Pluck: Or, John Oakley’s Inheritance

1869

• Mark the Match Boy: Or, Richard Hunter’s Ward

1869

• Rough and Ready: Or, Life Among the New York Newsboys

1870

• Ben the Luggage Boy: Or, Among the Wharves

1870

• Rufus and Rose: Or, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready

1870

• Sink or Swim: Or, Harry Raymond’s Resolve

1871

• Paul the Peddler: Or, The Adventures of a Young Street Merchant

1871

• Tattered Tom: Or, The Story of a Street Arab

1872

• Phil the Fiddler: Or, The Story of a Young Street Musician

1872

• Slow and Sure: Or, From the Street to the Shop

1872

• Strive and Succeed: Or, The Progress of Walter Conrad

1873

• Bound to Rise: Or, Harry Walton’s Motto

1873

• Try and Trust: Or, The Story of a Bound Boy

1874

• Brave and Bold: Or, The Fortunes of a Factory Boy

1874

• Risen from the Ranks: Or, Harry Walton’s Success

1875

• The Young Outlaw: Or, Adrift in the Streets

1876

• Shifting for Himself: Or, Gilbert Greyson’s Fortunes

1878

• The Western Boy: Or, The Road to Success

1884

• Do and Dare: Or, A Brave Boy’s Fight for Fortune

1887

• The Store Boy: Or, The Fortunes of Ben Barclay

1888

• The Errand Boy: Or, How Phil Brent Won Success

1890

• Ned Newton: Or, The Fortunes of a New York Bootblack

1890

• Struggling Upward: Or, Luke Larkin’s Luck

1895

• Adrift in the City: Or, Oliver Conrad’s Plucky Fight

1897

• Frank and Fearless: Or, The Fortunes of Jasper Kent

1899

• Jed the Poorhouse Boy

1899

• Silas Snobden’s Office Boy

1901

• Ben Bruce: Scenes in the Life of a Bowery Newsboy

1901

• Nelson the Newsboy: Or, Afloat in New York

1905

• From Farm to Fortune: Or, Nat Nason’s Strange Experience

1905

• Mark Manning’s Mission: The Story of a Shoe Factory Boy

1905

• The Young Book Agent: Or, Frank Hardy’s Road to Success

1906

• Joe the Hotel Boy: Or, Winning Out by Pluck

1908

• Wait and Win: The Story of Jack Drummond’s Pluck

Bibliography

Klein, Marcus. Easterns, Westerns, and Private Eyes: American Matters, 1870-1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. Examines late nineteenth century popular fiction, focusing on Alger’s rags-to-riches tales, Westerns, and detective stories.

Mayes, Herbert R. A Biography Without a Hero. New York: Macy-Masius, 1928. This work is a complete fabrication. When Mayes discovered there was insufficient information to write a true biography, he decided, with the approval of his publisher, to write a parody of Alger’s life based on nonexistent diaries and letters. Surprisingly, his parody was not recognized as such and was viewed as a legitimate biography for several decades. Reviews were generally favorable. Alger’s surviving friends and relatives apparently did not reveal the truth, probably because they were happy that the truth had not been revealed. Many subsequent biographers unwittingly used this book as a source of factual information on Alger’s life.

Nackenoff, Carol. The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Examines how Alger’s formulaic success stories have shaped political discourse in Ronald Reagan’s America and beyond. Nackenoff maintains that Alger responded to the increasing industrialization and division in the nineteenth century by devising a set of symbols to address Americans’ anxieties about power and identity.

Scharnhorst, Gary, and Jack Bales. The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. The best work on the life of Alger, and the first to fully unmask the faulty, fictionalized biography of Herbert R. Mayes.

Tebbel, John. From Rags to Riches: Horatio Alger and the American Dream. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Although based on the fictional work of Mayes, this volume does contain a complete bibliography of Alger’s works.

Weiss, Richard. The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale. New York: Basic Books, 1969. Analyzes the work of popular writers who portray the ease with which Americans can become successful.