Ragged Dick -Or- Street Life in New York with Boot-Blacks: A Classic Story of New York Street Life and the Rise from Poverty - Paperback

by Horatio Jr. Alger (Author)

Ragged Dick; Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks is Horatio Alger, Jr.'s best-known novel of poverty, ambition, honesty, and self-improvement in nineteenth-century New York City. Dick Hunter is a poor bootblack who lives by his wits on the streets, spending money freely when he has it and sleeping wherever he can. Yet he refuses to steal, wants to become respectable, and begins to rise through work, education, thrift, and the help of those who recognise his better qualities. The result is the classic Alger story: a tale of street life, moral effort, luck, and upward mobility.

First published in 1868, Ragged Dick became one of the defining boys' books of the nineteenth century and established the "rags to respectability" pattern associated with Alger's name. Its picture of bootblacks, lodging houses, theatres, ferries, offices, and street trade offers a vivid view of post-Civil War New York, while its central lesson reflects the period's faith in character, industry, and self-command. For readers of classic children's literature, American boys' fiction, New York history, nineteenth-century fiction, and social-mobility stories, Ragged Dick remains Alger's central work.