Horatio Alger, Jr. HORATIO ALGER JR: Copyright (c) 1996 by Bill
Roach All rights reserved. 1. Who was Horatio Alger? Horatio
Alger, Jr. was an American author (1832-1899). Alger produced
the one of the first boys' adventure series. Alger published
over 118 novels in book form. Another 280 novels were produced
in magazines along with more than five hundred short stories.
His young heroes succeed through a mixture of pluck and luck.
They are lucky, in part, because they deserve to be lucky. A
given hero may appear in several books, e.g., "Ragged Dick," but
the books do not have a common set of characters. Regardless of
their names, the heroes are remarkably similar. Horatio Alger,
Jr. was the oldest of five children of a debt-ridden New
England, Unitarian minister. He was very frail. He was under
weight and undersized, suffered from bronchial asthma, and near
sightedness. Because of his poor health, the family deferred his
introduction to the alphabet and reading until he was six years
old. He started formal sc