Horatio Alger Jr. January 13, 1832 - July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many 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 were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America 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 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 casts of 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 was growing stale. His publisher suggested he tour the American West 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 tired theme of "poor boy makes good." The backdrops of these novels, however, became the American West rather than the urban environments of the northeastern United States.
Horatio Alger Jr. January 13, 1832 - July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many 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 were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America 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 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 casts of 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 was growing stale. His publisher suggested he tour the American West 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 tired theme of "poor boy makes good." The backdrops of these novels, however, became the American West rather than the urban environments of the northeastern United States.
Brave and Bold was the first in a new series of Alger novels published by Loring, and the first in which sex rears its head. Before Brave and Bold, the girls of the hero's age were sisters or simply prop figures. In this new book, Hester Paine, the lovely daughter of Millville's most prominent citizen and the reigning village belle, becomes a source of fascination and contention for "factory boy" hero Robert Rushton and his nemesis, the rich, snobbish, kid glove-wearing youth Halbert Davis. Brave and Bold hit a new high in Alger's work, according Edwin Hoyt, but Hoyt describes the story as a "fiasco". 3] Gary Scharnhorst describes it as "horrifying", and lists a shooting, a stabbing, and a suicide among the book's elements. 4] The book was reviewed by a reader of the children's magazine St. Nicholas; he described it as "of the sensational order" and was glad he did not meet its characters in real life. This was the last review of an Alger work published by the prestigious magazine. The book initiated the controversy over making Alger's works available to the young.
Horatio Alger Jr. January 13, 1832 - July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many 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 were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America 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.
