STRUGGLING UPWARD AND OTHER WORKS —Horatio Alger Jr.—Crown Publishers ($3).
Nothing recedes like success. In the field of juvenile literature, Horatio Alger Jr., four of whose novels have just been reissued in this volume, was once regarded as the most successful writer who ever lived. Directly or indirectly he influenced the life of every U.S. town boy born between 1870 and 1900. Farm boys had less time and money for fiction, but if they did read stories, they read Alger; thousands of them imitated his heroes by going to Manhattan to seek their fortunes. But Alger's books lost most of their public during World War I and the rest of it during the '20s. In the Capone or quick-money era, boys were not attracted by titles like Plan and Prosper, Slow and Sure, Work and Win.
Until Struggling Upward and Other Works reappeared this week, the Alger books had completely vanished from the bookstores. They had also vanished from the circulation departments of public libraries, from Sunday schools where they were formerly given as prizes, from newsboys' homes of which Alger used to be a patron saint, and from the bookshelves of forward-looking children. Of the man and author, little was remembered except his name, around which had gathered a series of misconceptions. Some of them:
¶ Alger wrote about poor boys who became millionaires. (His heroes rose from poverty to riches but by contemporary standards they did not rise to the top—their fortunes usually averaged $10,000.)
¶ Alger heroes acquired their wealth by honesty, enterprise and patience. (They acquired it chiefly by meeting kind old merchants who became their guardians or adoptive fathers.)
¶ Alger himself made a fortune by the mass production of novels. (Never a shrewd businessman, Alger sold most of his works outright at moderate prices. At the height of his reputation, he had to piece out his literary earnings by tutoring schoolboys in French and Latin. One of his pupils: the future Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo.)
¶ Alger was "the most widely read author of the ages"—according to his only biographer, Herbert R. Mayes (TIME, May 7, 1928). (Not one of Alger's novels ever appeared near the top of any bestseller list.)
¶ Alger was the most prolific writer who ever lived. (He published about 130 books for boys, at least two novels for girls and several books of bad poetry, besides some earlier pamphlets. But most of the books were short, averaging 55,000 words by actual count; his total production was about 7,000,000 words. Frederick Dey, author of most of the "Nick Carter" series, ground out more than 21,000,000 words.)