Horatio Alger, Jr.

Assignment One -- Horatio Alger, Jr.
Ragged Dick

As Michael Meyer's Introduction to our edition of Ragged Dick explains, Horatio Alger, Jr. was a posthumous subject of one of the most outrageous literary hoaxes of the twentieth century. Herbert Mayes' 1928 A Biography Without a Hero was a complete fabrication, written as a joke in imitation of the muck-raking biographies popular at the time. Remarkably it was almost immediately recognized as the standard Alger biography. More remarkably, in the forty years that followed its publication several respected academics published biographies that repeated Mayes' stories and sometimes claimed to be based on direct inspection of the non-existent diaries that Mayes had made up. This meant that until 1980 when Gary Schornhorst uncovered the lies, every text that purported to describe Alger's life was completely false. I often repeat this story to students as a cautionary tale about checking sources as carefully as possible. Of course, the irony of the story is that in his effort to make up a scandalous biography of Alger, Mayes missed the truly scandalous nature of Alger's departure from the ministry.

After promising to leave the ministry, Alger moved to New York City, eventually becoming a prolific writer of children's books. His formulaic books were steadily popular perhaps rivaling the popularity of Mark Twain. His writing never made him rich in part because he donated much of his earning to help the sort of homeless youth pictured in Jacob Riis's photographs displayed here and described in Riis's ground-breaking sociological study How the Other Half Lives (1890). Use these links to read Riis 's horrifying description of abandoned children and the efforts of charitable organizations such as the Newsboys Lodging House to help them:

Chapter 16: Waifs of the City's Slums.
Chapter 18: Street Arabs

The following links to supplemental reading may prove helpful:

Alger's father was a Unitarian minister and Horatio Jr. followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from Harvard Divinity School. It is useful to understand the differences between Unitarianism and Calvinism.

Many Christian leaders in the nineteenth century believed that their first duty was to reform society in preparation for the Second Coming. These Social Gospelers included individuals such as Charles Sheldon, whose best-elling book In His Steps popularized the question "What would Jesus do?" Another influential social gospeler was Washington Gladden.

One British precursor of an Alger-type story of upward mobility was the legend of Dick Whittington and his cat.

Alger's advice to work hard and save echoes the advice Benjamin Franklin had given a hundred years ealier in the guise of Poor Richard in "The Way to Wealth" and Alger's encouragement of charity parallels the responsibilities of success as outlined in Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"

The following link to an article that I published over twenty years ago in the Journal of General Education probably won't be helpful, but you might be interested in why I thought, and still think, that Alger is worth teaching. "The Contemporary Student and Horatio Alger"

Return to course syllabus

updated June 7, 2006

As Michael Meyer's Introduction to our edition of Ragged Dick explains, Horatio Alger, Jr. was a posthumous subject of one of the most outrageous literary hoaxes of the twentieth century. Herbert Mayes' 1928 A Biography Without a Hero was a complete fabrication, written as a joke in imitation of the muck-raking biographies popular at the time. Remarkably it was almost immediately recognized as the standard Alger biography. More remarkably, in the forty years that followed its publication several respected academics published biographies that repeated Mayes' stories and sometimes claimed to be based on direct inspection of the non-existent diaries that Mayes had made up. This meant that until 1980 when Gary Schornhorst uncovered the lies, every text that purported to describe Alger's life was completely false. I often repeat this story to students as a cautionary tale about checking sources as carefully as possible. Of course, the irony of the story is that in his effort to make up a scandalous biography of Alger, Mayes missed the truly scandalous nature of Alger's departure from the ministry.

After promising to leave the ministry, Alger moved to New York City, eventually becoming a prolific writer of children's books. His formulaic books were steadily popular perhaps rivaling the popularity of Mark Twain. His writing never made him rich in part because he donated much of his earning to help the sort of homeless youth pictured in Jacob Riis's photographs displayed here and described in Riis's ground-breaking sociological study How the Other Half Lives (1890). Use these links to read Riis 's horrifying description of abandoned children and the efforts of charitable organizations such as the Newsboys Lodging House to help them: Chapter 16: Waifs of the City's Slums. Chapter 18: Street Arabs

The following links to supplemental reading may prove helpful: Alger's father was a Unitarian minister and Horatio Jr. followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from Harvard Divinity School. It is useful to understand the differences between Unitarianism and Calvinism. Many Christian leaders in the nineteenth century believed that their first duty was to reform society in preparation for the Second Coming. These Social Gospelers included individuals such as Charles Sheldon, whose best-elling book In His Steps popularized the question "What would Jesus do?" Another influential social gospeler was Washington Gladden. One British precursor of an Alger-type story of upward mobility was the legend of Dick Whittington and his cat. Alger's advice to work hard and save echoes the advice Benjamin Franklin had given a hundred years ealier in the guise of Poor Richard in "The Way to Wealth" and Alger's encouragement of charity parallels the responsibilities of success as outlined in Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"
The following link to an article that I published over twenty years ago in the Journal of General Education probably won't be helpful, but you might be interested in why I thought, and still think, that Alger is worth teaching. "The Contemporary Student and Horatio Alger"