by Horatio Alger

Horatio Alger began a long career as a popular novelist for boys with the publication of Ragged Dick, his most successful book. So widely known were Alger's 119 books in the late 1800s and early 1900s that a "Horatio Alger story" became a synonym for a person, real or fictional, who rises in life from rags to riches. Actually a story about the rise from rags to respectability rather than riches, Ragged Dick is set at a time when two interrelated trends were shaping American lives. Both urbanization, or the growth of cities, and the spread of industry posed new challenges to society. People moving from the countryside to cities were confronted with different ways of living and working than in the past. Mixing...