Horatio Alger life and biography

Horatio Alger, Jr. was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many formulaic juvenile novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty.

Alger published about 100 poems and odes, most written by 1875. In 1853–54 he published short stories with Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion and The Flag of Our Nation. Other Gleason publications printed about 100 stories before he began writing for Student and Schoolmate.

Alger had many publishers over the decades. His first was A. K. Loring of Boston, and when Loring declared bankruptcy, Porter & Coates became his second and Henry T. Coates and Company his third. Other publishers include G. W. CArleton, J. S. Oglivie, John Anderson who publiahed the biographies, A. L. Burt, Frank Munsey, Penn Publishing, and Street & Smith. M.A. Donahue and the New York Book Company published inexpensive paperback reprints by the thousands. It is believed there were at least 60 publishers releasing Alger.

Author of books:

Ragged Dick (1867, serial)
Luck and Pluck (1869, serial)
Tattered Tom (1871, serial)
Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving (1875, poetry)
From Canal Boy to President (1881, biography)
Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy (1883, biography)

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