death_date death_place birth_place pseudonym nationality notableworks birth_date genre image article_title name occupation alma_mater
18 july 1899 natick , massachusetts , united states chelsea , massachusetts , united states carl putnam julian starr cantab arthur hamilton caroline f. preston arthur lee american '' ragged dick '' -lrb- 1868 -rrb- 13 january 1832 children 's literature horatio alger jr.jpg horatio alger , jr. .
 horatio alger , jr. . author harvard college , 1852
horatio alger , jr. .

horatio alger , jr. -lrb- ; january 13 , 1832 -- july 18 , 1899 -rrb- was a prolific 19th-century american author , best known for his many juvenile 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 .
essentially , all of alger 's juvenile novels share the same theme : a teenage boy works hard to escape poverty .
often though , it is not the hard work itself 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 .
in the last decades of the 19th century , alger 's moral tone coarsened with the change in boys ' tastes .
sensational thrills were wanted by the public .
the puritan ethic had loosened its grip on america , and violence , murder , and other sensational themes entered alger 's works .
public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young .
they were briefly successful , but with the first decades of the 20th century , interest was renewed in alger 's novels and they sold in the thousands .
by the time he died in 1899 , alger had published around a hundred volumes .
he is buried in south natick , massachusetts .
since 1947 , the horatio alger association of distinguished americans has awarded scholarships and prizes to deserving individuals .
