Horatio Alger

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks Horatio Alger

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks by Horatio Alger, Jr. Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger, Jr. serialized in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's all-time bestseller. The tale follows a poor boot black's rise to middle class respectability in 19th-century New York City. It had a favorable reception. Student and Schoolmate reported their readers were delighted with the first installment and Putnam's Magazine thought boys would love the novel. One modern scholar considers the story a "puerile fantasy" about class assimilation. The plot and theme were repeated virtually in toto in Alger's subsequent novels and became the grist for parodists and satirists. Ragged Dick and Alger's Silas Snobden's Office Boy inspired the musical comedy Shine! in 1982. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.