Ragged Dick - Softcover

Alger, Horatio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438296762 ISBN 13: 9781438296760

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009

Synopsis

Ragged Dick is a children's novel by Horatio Alger, Jr. about a poor bootblack and his rise to middle-class comfort and respectability through good moral behavior, clean living, and determination.

The classic "rags to riches" story.

About this title

About the Author

Horatio Alger, Jr. (1834–1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many formulaic juvenile novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. He initially wrote and published for adults, but a friendship with boys' author William Taylor Adams led him to writing for the young. He published for years in Adams's Student and Schoolmate, a boys' magazine of moral writings. His lifelong theme of "rags to respectability" had a profound impact on America in the Gilded Age. His works gained even greater popularity following his death, but gradually lost reader interest in the 1920s. Gary Scharnhorst, author of Horatio Alger, Jr., describes Alger's style as "anachronistic", "often laughable", "distinctive", and "distinguished by the quality of its literary allusions." These allusions are what set his work apart from the pulps, Scharnhorst opines, and include the Bible, Shakespeare (in half his books), John Milton, Longfellow, Cicero, Horace, Joseph Addison, Oliver Goldsmith, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, and many others. "By the diversity of his allusions," Scharnhorst writes, "Alger ... both revealed his erudition and enhanced the literary quality of his work."

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438296762
• ISBN 13: 9781438296760
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124