Horatio Alger

Look at Ragged Dick through the lenses of 1860s New York and Alger's own life there. Ragged Dick is a fourteen-year-old bootblack - he smokes, drinks occasionally, and sleeps on the streets - but he is anxious "to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up "'spectable". He won't steal under any circumstances, and many gentlemen who are impressed with this virtue (and his determination to succeed) offer their aid. Mr. Greyson, for example, invites him to church and Mr. Whitney gives him five dollars for performing a service. Dick uses the money to open a bank account and to rent his first apartment. He fattens his bank account by practicing frugality and is tutored by his roommate Fosdick in the three R's. When Dick rescues a drowning child, the grateful father rewards him with a new suit and a job in his mercantile firm. With this final event, Richard is "cut off from the old vagabond life which he hoped never to resume", and henceforth will call himself Richard Hunter, Esq.

"I ain't knocked round the city streets all my life for nothin'," proclaims Ragged Dick, the fast-talking boy hero of Horatio Alger's classic rags-to-riches tale. Dick is a plucky street boy who smokes, gambles, and speaks ungrammatically--but he is also honest and hardworking, striving not for wealth and status, but for a steady job, a decent place to sleep, and respectability. A quintessential boy's novel of adventure, romance, and coming of age, "Ragged Dick" brings to life the drama and perils of living among other young outcasts in the crowded streets of lower Manhattan. It is at the same time an exhilarating tale of one boy's metamorphosis from a dirty street urchin to a handsome, self-respecting gentleman. With an Introduction by Michael Meyer and a New Afterword by Bryan Waterman