Horatio Alger: Gender and Success in the Gilded Age: "Ragged Dick" and "Tattered Tom"

by Charles Orson Cook (Editor)

The Horatio Alger myth has worked itself deeply into American culture. Even those who have never read one of his stories and many who could not identify him have come to believe that honest, industrious adolescents can easily rise from poverty to respectability. That conviction has reinforced notions of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. It has also strengthened a sense of naive optimism that in America things will always get better.
The two stories here, one of which violates convention by featuring a heroine rather than a hero, invite a close examination of how Alger's fictional protagonists win out. Readers will discover that the often used phrase rags-to-riches does not describe the career of the typical Alger hero, whose progress is rather from adversity to a solid and respectable place in society. A critical introduction examines the ratio of reality to sentimentality in Alger's work. And since the author intended the stories to be not time-bound but applicable and determinative in all circumstances, the tales invite speculation as to how relevant they are to the changed economic and social circumstances of later times.

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2001

About the author

Charles Orson Cook earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas–Little Rock before moving to Texas to pursue graduate study at the University of Houston, where he completed both his master's and Ph.D. degrees. He began his teaching career in Arkansas, including service in the Little Rock and Lonoke public schools. After relocating to Houston, he taught at Milby High School in HISD before joining the faculty at St. John's School (SJS) in 1980, where he taught until his retirement in 2005.