Ragged Dick [Paperback]

Horatio Alger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2006 | Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up

A novel, subtitled 'street life in New York with the boot-blacks' from a popular figure in the history of American social ideals

Editorial Reviews

Review

Fourteen-year-old Dick Hunter lives on the streets of New York in the 1860s. His parents are dead, and he has been on his own since the age of seven. He shines shoes to earn a living. He sleeps in boxes. He jokes about having a mansion on Fifth Avenue and about owning shares of Erie Railroad stock. But he cannot imagine ever being more than a bootblack who spends every cent he earns and lives hand-to-mouth--until by chance he meets Frank Whitney. --From the Publisher --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Horatio Alger, Jr. (1834–1899) 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. He initially wrote and published for adults, but a friendship with boys' author William Taylor Adams led him to writing for the young. He published for years in Adams's Student and Schoolmate, a boys' magazine of moral writings. His lifelong theme of "rags to respectability" had a profound impact on America in the Gilded Age. His works gained even greater popularity following his death, but gradually lost reader interest in the 1920s. Gary Scharnhorst, author of Horatio Alger, Jr., describes Alger's style as "anachronistic", "often laughable", "distinctive", and "distinguished by the quality of its literary allusions." These allusions are what set his work apart from the pulps, Scharnhorst opines, and include the Bible, Shakespeare (in half his books), John Milton, Longfellow, Cicero, Horace, Joseph Addison, Oliver Goldsmith, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, and many others. "By the diversity of his allusions," Scharnhorst writes, "Alger ... both revealed his erudition and enhanced the literary quality of his work." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Echo Library (August 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1406806714
• ISBN-13: 978-1406806717
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,451,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Child's Book?, March 8, 2007

By 

Alicia Teodorini "LOVEtoCOOK" (Concord, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ragged Dick (Paperback)

This is a realistic book about a young boy doing "good" and in turn he has many lucky breaks. It is supposed to be a child's book, but I don't know how many children would voluntarily read this. I read it for my Children's Literature class and I loved it! It deals with a less severe form of didactism, which is a nice change. It is a fast read also.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless lessons, January 11, 2007

By 

Peter J. Mozena "Peter" (Portland Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ragged Dick (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection) [UNABRIDGED] (Audio Cassette)

This book is a book about timeless virtues and friendship. It is book about rising to find one's place in society. With newer books today attempting to push political special interests, this is a personal message. The story shows how one can rise with a simple positive character and persistence. These stories should be brought to the forefront in today's education. A simple warm and inspirational story for young and old alike. I wish I had the power and will to bring these to all middle schools and other young people.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rags To Riches: The Classic Horatio Alger Myth, March 31, 2006

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ragged Dick (Paperback)

Published in 1867, RAGGED DICK was both Horatio Alger Jr.'s first and most popular work. Like all Alger's novels, it is extremely diadactic and exists to promote specific values: hard work, thrift, honesty, integrity, and bravery. Given this, one would expect it to be a dry read, but Alger takes pains to paint his story in bright colors: the novel swirls with shops, crowds, and a range of characters, and while it could not be called exciting in any modern sense it nonetheless remains unexpectedly readable to this day.

The title character is Richard Hunter, better known as Ragged Dick, an orphan living on the streets of New York and scraping a living as a shoe shine boy. Although he is quick witted and has a basic morality, he lacks direction--but when he is employed to act as a guide to the city to Frank Whitney, a boy of his own age, he is impressed with Frank's manners and education and determines to better himself. Dick later meets Henry Fosdick, an educated youth who has fallen on hard times through no fault of his own, and Fosdick agrees to tutor Dick. They take a room together and, with the aid of kindly Mr. Greyson and a sudden twist of fate, are soon on the road to financial security and social respectability.

Throughout Alger's career critics frequently complained that the ultimate success of his heroes actually depended more on pure luck than upon any of the values Alger so carefully preached. This is certainly true of RAGGED DICK; although he faces considerable adversity, at his worst moments he is always fortunate enough to find a sympathetic older man who is willing to reward him--and some times spectacularly so. This may arise from the fact that Alger himself tended to be fortunate in precisely this way throughout his life, and when success came to him, he made an effort to help boys in exactly the way that his many novels describe.

This may not have been entirely altruistic. While his defenders dismiss it as so much gossip, various records pertaining to Alger's brief work as a Unitarian minister indicate that he was removed from the ministry due to questionable relationships with teenage boys, and other documents include comments by Alger which seem to support this. Interestingly, however, once fame placed him in the public eye no further scandal arose, and it may be that he was able to subliminate his sexual interests into artistic ones. Still, it would be very easy to turn a Freudian eye upon his novels, which inevitably involve a young boy being rewarded in some form or fashion by an older man.

Whatever the case, RAGGED DICK--and indeed all the Alger novels--are perfectly harmless so far as young readers are concerned, and the quality of writing is very good indeed. Teenagers brought up on what passes for youth-fiction these days will likely to find it tough going, but most adult readers will find it a mildly amusing return to innocence.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer