In January 1867, Alger's "Ragged Dick" began serialization (publication in parts) in "Student and Schoolmate". The story is about a poor shoe shine boy's rise to middle class comfort and security. The book was a huge success. Boys' loved it. It had all sorts of exciting adventures in a big city. It had lots of street slang. It exposed the swindles and crimes practiced by big city crooks. The story surprised and delighted boys in small town America. They had never read of such things.
The parts of the story were gathered together and published as a book in 1868. It became Alger's all-time bestseller. It is the first in the 6-volume Ragged Dick Series. This series follows the further adventures of Ragged Dick and his friends. Alger wrote almost entirely for boys after the success of "Ragged Dick". He had found his place in literary America.
In 1875, Alger's stories about street boys were growing stale. Boys' tastes had changed. They wanted exciting stories about hunters, cowboys, and Indians. Alger went West to look for material.
He arrived in California in February 1877. He travelled the length of the West Coast, then returned to New York late in the year. In 1878, Alger went West again.
These two trips had little impact on his stories. He wrote a few dull books with western settings in the following years, but remained stuck in his "poor boy makes good" formula.
In the early 1870s, librarians, teachers, ministers, and others interested in the well being of the young said the stories by Alger and other boys' writers were not suitable for children. These people thought such books were too violent.
Critics said his popularity among boys was due to his "sensational" style. In 1877, one minister wondered why the public library allowed children to read books that could only demoralize and weaken them. He complained about "the endless reams of such drivel poured forth by Horatio Alger, Jr." In 1879, a public library in Vermont was the first library in America to throw away Alger's books. Other public libraries then did the same.
Alger's publisher A. K. Loring of Boston, Massachusetts was a victim of this censorship effort. The company had relied on Alger's stories to make them money, but Loring went bankrupt in 1881. These efforts to get rid of Alger's books were defeated. People started reading them again after his death.
In 1881, Alger wrote President James A. Garfield's biography, "From Canal Boy to President". He thought this was serious literary work. He hoped the book would make him famous. He paid no attention to the facts however. Instead, he filled the book with exciting details to thrill boy readers. The book was a success. It sold 20,000 copies. The publisher wanted to bring out an entire series about the great men of America.
Alger was hired to write Abraham Lincoln's biography. Once again, he paid no attention to the facts. He wrote thrilling details for boy readers. The book did not sell well. He went on to write a biography of Daniel Webster. Then he stopped writing biographies. He said such books were time-consuming and required too much work. The publisher dropped the idea of a series.
Alger led a quiet life in the years before his death. He dined out, went to the theater, and visited old friends. He kept in touch with the boys he had taken an interest in over the years. He read parts of "Ragged Dick" to boys' groups.
He was a Republican, and took an interest in politics. He forgot his past life in Brewster, and wrote of his days as a clergyman: "I studied theology chiefly as a branch of literary culture and without any intention of devoting myself to it as a profession."
The quality of his writing deteriorated in his last years. He reworked his old books. Times had changed. Boys wanted more excitement and violence in books. Alger gave them what they wanted.
Critics complained of the sameness in his characters, themes, and other details. Alger defended his work. He said that his readers did not object to the "family resemblances", so why should the critics?
In the last years of the 1890s, Alger's books did not sell well. His income dwindled. In 1896, he had (what he called) a nervous breakdown. He moved to his sister's house in South Natick, Massachusetts. He died there on July 18, 1899 after an asthma attack. He was almost forgotten by the public in his last years. His death received little attention in the newspapers.
Alger once estimated that he made no more than $100,000 during his New York years (1866–1896). He was paid about US$250 for each of his stories published in parts in magazines. He received a small amount of money when each story was published in book form. He was not rich at the end of his life, but he was not poor either. He left only small amounts of money to family and friends. He also left them his copyrights, his manuscripts, and his personal library.
People became interested in Alger's books in the twenty years after his death. This was the Progressive Era. It was a time when people wanted honest business practices, equal opportunity, and a return to old-fashioned values. About seventeen to twenty million Alger books were printed and sold during this time.
People lost interest in Alger's books in the early 1920s. His leading publisher stopped printing the books.
Alger was competing at that time with "The Rover Boys", "Tom Swift", and other popular books for boys. Surveys in 1932 and 1947 indicated that very few children had read or even heard of Alger. In 1932 (one hundred years after Alger's birth), "The Literary Digest" declared him "forgotten".
Just before his death, Alger claimed to have sold 800,000 books during his years as a writer. After his death, his books sold at one million "per year". More Alger books were sold per year after his death than were sold during the writer's lifetime. Edward Stratemeyer, the head of a company that published a great amount of boys' fiction, adopted Alger's heroic moral stance to his own books for boys. Other writers adjusted Alger's morality and ethics to suit more money-focused times. These revisions remained strong until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929.
The quality of his literary allusions however makes his writing distinctive. These allusions set his work apart from the books cranked out in the "fiction factories" of the day. Great authors alluded to in Alger's boys' book include Shakespeare, Milton, Longfellow, Cicero, Horace, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, and dozens of others. The Bible is referenced in more than half of his works. These allusions reveal Alger's knowledge of literature and "enhance the literary quality of his work".
The most prevalent theme in Alger's novels is the "rise to respectability". Business success was important to the young Alger hero, but even more important was becoming a respected citizen. This does not mean a rise to wealth and riches. Many of Alger's books end with their young heroes getting modest clerical jobs in large firms. These jobs offer chances to rise further. Alger's heroes deserve their good fortune because they are virtuous young men. Alger was mainly a moral instructor for the young. He was content to guide boys on the path of piety and moral virtue rather than business success. Other themes in his works include Strength through Adversity, Beauty versus Money, the Country versus the City, the Old World versus the New World, and the Search for an Identity.
Alger's books are filled with stereotypical characters and dramatic highpoints (setpieces) played over and over again in book after book. One such setpiece is the struggle between the virtuous young hero and a snobbish youth. These setpieces always end with the snobbish youth getting his just deserts. This particular setpiece likely has its source in the childhood bullying Alger suffered from neighborhood boys in Chelsea.