Ragged Dick & Mark, the Match Boy

Ragged Dick

by Horatio Alger Jr.

Two famous novels by Horatio Alger that focus on rags-to-riches tales.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, New York, Literature

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1869

About the author

Horatio Alger, Jr. (January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, most famous for his novels following the adventures of bootblacks, newsboys, peddlers, buskers, and other impoverished children in their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort. His novels about boys who succeed under the tutelage of older mentors were hugely popular in their day.

Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister, Alger entered Harvard University at the age of sixteen. Following graduation, he briefly worked in education before touring Europe for almost a year. He then entered the Harvard Divinity School, and, in 1864, took a position at a Unitarian church in Brewster, Massachusetts. Two years later, he resigned following allegations he had sexual relations with two teenage boys.[1] He retired from the ministry and moved to New York City where he formed an association with the Newsboys Lodging House and other agencies offering aid to impoverished children. His sympathy for the working boys of the city, coupled with the moral values learned at home, were the basis of his many juvenile rags to riches novels illustrating how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. This widely held view involves Alger's characters achieving extreme wealth and the subsequent remediation of their "old ghosts." Alger is noted as a significant figure in the history of American cultural and social ideals. He died in 1899.

The first full-length Alger biography was commissioned in 1927 and published in 1928, and along with many others that borrowed from it later proved to be heavily fictionalized parodies perpetuating hoaxes and made up anecdotes that "would resemble the tell-all scandal biographies of the time."[2] Other biographies followed, sometimes citing the 1928 hoax as fact. In the last decades of the twentieth century a few more reliable biographies were published that attempt to correct the errors and fictionalizations of the past.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are two young adult novels published in the late 1860s, and though they are as simple and as didactic as one might expect from novels of that era, there's nothing else like them for opening a window on the life of street children in nineteenth century New York.

In the first novel, Ragged Dick, the main character, takes a country friend on a tour down Broadway, passing by Barnum's American Museum, A.T. Stewart's Marble Palace Department Store, the Cooper Institute and other noteworthy sites, pointing out their features all along. As literature its dreck, but for a historian who wants to see what New York at the time felt like it can't be beat. The second book likewise takes the reader through the Children's Lodging House, the Bowery Theater, and the Fulton ferry, besides giving one a description of the life of bootblacks, match boys, apple girls, Bowery B'hoys and other assorted street creatures. It works as great reportage, if not always as stellar writing.

Actually, most of the writing isn't bad (unlike most pulp writers, Alger was a Harvard-boy after all), and the characters are all sympathetic and occasionally even funny, so if someone asked me what New York in this era felt like, this is the first place I'd send them.

[Chris Gleck]

The book pictured above is the version I read, which combined these two Horatio Alger novels. The introduction stated that these are two of the best or most representative of the 100+ Horatio Alger book from that time period. This book continues to follow some of the characters from Ragged Dick, plus introduced mark, the match boy as a new character. There was another story about these characters in between these two books, but the author fills you in on what happened in that story to follow along in this story. So now I can say I have read two Horatio Alger books and I am not sorry that I have read them.

[Hal Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume is, in some ways, the perfect encapsulation of Alger: The Phenomenon, even though it leaves out the middle book of a trilogy. It successfully bridges the early Alger's obsession with hard work with the later Alger's obsession with melodramatic inheritance. That is to say, Dick is a waif who though "pluck and luck," through industry and honesty, bootstraps himself out of the gutter; Mark is a secret-tycoon orphan biding his time until the inevitable denouement of inheritance. Dick earns his money; Mark has only to reclaim what was once his.

(Fosdick, the bridge character, is the rightful heir to a small amount of capital. His arc is introduced in the first book or the trilogy and resolved in the third.)

Bear in mind that although I call these books early and late Alger, there is only a year between them. Alger would have many hardworking paupers, and many disenfranchised heirs, in the years to come, and only the ratio of emphasis shifts as the twentieth century looms closer. If for a Platonist all learning is remembering, for a late-Alger hero all success is remembering you were rich all along, or at least reminding the authorities of that fact as you trap the fiend who stole your railroad shares in any number of implausible traps.

Ragged Dick, or respectable Richard Hunter, remains the best Alger hero, by which I mean the least cloying. He could never be a secret blueblood because (Alger's closeted and most thoroughly unconscious classism here) he is, no matter how refined he becomes, too coarse. He maintains the "vigor" and irony of the underclass, always joking about his background and his station, always smirking at the airs of a society he will only plunder for its virtue and knowledge. If he found out his parents were plutocrats it would kill him. His entire character is based on absorbing and never denying his humble origins. Mark, in contrast, is a conventionally priggish Victorian hero, scarcely deserving of his wealth except through his propensity to suffer.

Dick, perhaps alone among Alger heroes, is almost a human.

[Tobinsfavorite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horatio Alger is not good. What is good in this edition is the introduction by Rychard Fink. (Yes. Rychard Fink.) In it, he describes how Horatio Alger is not good, but he is important in American culture. What is more, Fink says that if you read these two, you pretty much understand all there is to know about Alger. Fink also amuses the reader greatly at Alger's expense.

With all that, I enjoyed reading these two novels. I enjoyed the smart remarks by the hero, I enjoyed the sudden turns of fate by miraculous coincidence, and I truly enjoyed the shiftless worthlessness of the Bad Example. I do worry about the persistent idea that any hardworking person can make it from nothing to something substantial if only they try ahrd enough; has no one who promotes the Alger ideal read this book? Do they not realize the sheer odds against rescuing the drowning son of a kind, rich man?

Yes, that is the kind of coincidence that turns the fortunes of an Alger hero.

Having read these two stories, I still want to read "Fame and Fortune", the volume that fits between them, but Alger is out of style, and I can't get it from the library.

[Manuel López · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alger creó unos personajes caracterizados por su lucha contra la pobreza y por su bondad. Es posible que allá por el siglo XIX finales personas como Alger pudieron ayudar a salir adelante a otros jovenes que se hallaban en una situación clara de pobreza y necesidad.
Alger created a universe in which fighting poverty and behaving properly was possible, long ago in the last years of the 19th century. His characters as Alger himself were able to help other young people out of poverty. Both stories are full of good attitudes and actions.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something fascinating about the total lack of nuance or ambiguity, the completely diagrammatic story of good rewarded and bad punished. And then you factor in how popular some of these books were, which means they were part of the programming, they're worth looking at.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best way to indoctrinate your helpless little kids into the American Dream.

[brian tanabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

All boys should read Alger in their formative years.

[Gu Kun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two heart-warming stories by an unjustly forgotten author. The thirty-page introduction is well worth reading.

[Corbin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Because everyone should know the core myths of their society of origin.

Apparently the American myth goes something like this: Be charming, clever, and hardworking. Spend every cent you earn the same day you receive it. Revere notions of private property above all else. Sooner or later the wealthy and wise will see you for the diamond in the rough you are, dust you off, and give you a good-paying job--just so long as you're not so impertinent as to want or to ask for such a thing.

Because that's worked so very well for the American economy so far.

Seriously, this book tries to be Huckleberry Finn, without the cynical charm or the steely look into human nature.

[Brodie]

I've read three of Alger's novels before, about a boy named Walter. The first was titled "Strong and Steady." But Ragged Dick is the classic. What surprised me was the fact that RD read so much like a travel narrative. The story is structured around Dick showing a wealthy boy the ins and outs of NYC. He points out the posh hotels and restaurants, and instructs the boy how not to get swindled by merchants selling adulterated goods. So, oddly enough for a story named for a boy, the story is as much about a place as a boy.

[Felicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

My understanding is that Horatio Alger was the pop fiction superhero of his time: sort of a 1930s Nicholas Sparks or something.

Yeah, I'm not big on "The Notebook", either. So far this book is ubercute, ubermoral, if you've got a good heart and a strong constitution and are willing and able and honest, you will make it. Someone will find and discover and encourage and mentor you. Bla, bla, bla.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is like a PG version of the Little Rascals. You go little guy! It makes me feel bad about blowin' my childhood cash on anything things like G.I. Joes and Big League Chew while I could have been saving money and plotting to exploit Honduran children when I got older.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

its terrible. but it gives a glimpse of new york before the brooklyn bridge when it was more like new dehli. gives a few histories of neighborhoods, and above all a revolting and saccheriney waspish veiw of destiny

[Caffection Mariah Byron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charles Dickens he's not.

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

School read, supposed to be inspiring for all us bored, no-need-to-work-because-we-have-everything adolescents! See what this enterprising young boy made of his life!!!

[Alaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for its interest as an historical artifact, two stars for its literary qualities.

[[ J o ]]

Read the first book in the Ragged Dick series, Ragged Dick. 1 Star; therefore will not be continuing with the series.