Individuals >> Alger, Horatio Jr. ( Julian Starr ) (1832-1899)

Novelist, Essayist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Travel Writer, Editor.

Born in Revere, Massachusetts in 1832, Alger was the son of a Unitarian minister, and the oldest of five children. He briefly attended Harvard Divinity School in 1853 but soon dropped out to work as an assistant editor for the Boston Daily Advertiser. He spent the next few years as a teacher and as an editorial writer for the Boston newspaper, True Flag. In 1857 Alger returned to the role of student and began taking classes at the Divinity School at Cambridge University. He completed his studies in 1860 and spent the following year traveling through Europe. He wrote several articles about his travels, which were published in various newspapers, including the New York Sun (Karrenbrock). Alger returned to the United States in 1861 and, in 1864, he took a position with the First Unitarian Church of Brewster, Massachusetts. This position ended abruptly when "in March 1866, he was charged by a committee of his congregation with 'a most heinous crime, a crime of no less magnitude than the abominable and revolting crime of unnatural familiarity with boys....' Alger admitted that he had been 'imprudent,' hastily left town, and never thereafter willingly revealed his connection with Brewster" (Karrenbrock).

Alger's earlier stories and poems were published in magazines like Harper's and Putnam's. He also wrote about his travels in Canada and Europe for The New York Sun and other papers. Before moving to New York City in 1866, Alger published several books: Bertha's Christmas Vision (1856), Nothing to Do, a Tilt at Our Best Society (1857), Frank's Campaign, or What a Boy Can Do (1864) and Helen Ford, a Novel (1866). He wrote over 100 books in 30 years, perfecting the "rags to riches" tale for which he is most commonly known. Because of the prolific nature of Alger's writing, it is almost impossible to determine the exact number of books, stories, poems, etc. he wrote in his lifetime, but "as Quentin Reynolds says in The Fiction Factory (1955), 'Alger, according to his biographer, Herbert R. Mayes, wrote 119 books. Actually, he wrote one book and rewrote it 118 times'" (Karrenbrock). Some of his most successful series (such as Ragged Dick, Luck and Pluck, and Tattered Tom) feature New York boys who succeed through intelligence and uncompromising industry. The protagonists in Alger's books typically fit within a mold, specifically "a boy who, born poor, overcame odds by living virtuously and working hard and rose to fame and fortune. The preachment in the books that honesty, perseverance, and industry were certain to be rewarded was taken seriously and followed faithfully by many boys in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who read some of the estimated 20,000,000 copies sold in the United States alone" ("Horatio Alger").

Alger's work in other genres includes a collection of poems Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving (1875) that received positive accolades from Pfaff's regular Edmund Clarence Stedman, and biographies like From Canal Boy to President, or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield (1881) that he purportedly wrote in thirteen days (Karrenbrock).

During the last two decades of his life, Alger "found it more difficult to do his charitable works as sales of his books continued to dwindle and his income decreased. He had to write with ever-increasing speed to make enough money, a fact which accounts in part for the poor quality of his writing, although Alger at his best was not really very good" (Karrenbrock). Alger's final book, The Disagreeable Woman, A Social Mystery was published in 1895 under the pseudonym, Julian Starr. A breakdown in 1896 prompted Alger's retreat to his sister's home in South Natick, Massachusetts. He died there in 1899.

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References & Biographical Resources

Charley Shiveley, ed. Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working-Class Camerados. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. [more about this work]

[pages: 9]

"Horatio Alger." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Gale Research, 1998. [more about this work]

Hoyt, Edwin Palmer. Horatio’s Boys; The Life and Works of Horatio Alger, Jr. Radnor, PA: Chilton Book Co., 1974. [more about this work]

Karrenbrock, Marilyn H. "Horatio Alger, Jr." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 42: American Writers for Children Before 1900. Ed. Glenn E. Estes. Detroit: Gale, 1985. 52-73. [more about this work]

"Literary Notes." New York Saturday Press. 4 Jun. 1859: 2. [more about this work]

Mayes, Herbert R. Alger; A Biography without a Hero. New York: Macy-Masius, 1928. [more about this work]

Scharnhorst, Gary and Jack Bales. The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985. [more about this work]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume I, Aaron-Crandall. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

Appleton locates Alger during the first run of Saturday Press first at Cambridge theological school and then touring Europe until returning to Cambridge in 1864. [pages: 49]

[Alger, Horatio Jr.]. "Eugene Scribe." The North American Review. Oct. 1863: 325-338. [more about this work]