Ragged Dick Nce Pa

by Alger,Horatio

• ISBN13: 9780393925890
• ISBN10: 0393925897
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-29
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is arguably the best known of Horatio Alger's American rags-to-riches stories. It is canonical as a cultural text, rather than a purely literary one, as this Norton Critical Edition reflects. An extensive "Contexts" section includes maps, photographs, and documents showing how and why Alger used the backdrop of New York City to highlight problems of urban poverty, immigration, and child labor in mid-nineteenth century America."Criticism" is thematically organized around contemporary reviews and responses, the heated public debate about whether Alger should be available in American public libraries, parodies of and related responses to Alger, and four recent critical essays by Mary Wroth Walsh, Glenn Hendler, Michael Moon, and Hildegard Hoeller.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
The Text of Ragged Dick	p. 1
Contexts	p. 117
Alger on His Art and Life	p. 121
Friar Anselmo	p. 121
Are My Boys Real?	p. 122
Advice from Horatio Alger, Jr.	p. 124
Writing Stories for Boys	p. 125
The New York City Background	p. 129
New York and Its People	p. 129
Map: Dick's tour through the New York City of the 1860s	p. 132
Street Children	p. 139
Outcast Children	p. 141
Homeless Boys	p. 143
From Orphan Trains and Their Precious Cargo	p. 145
Criticism	p. 151
Contemporary Reviews	p. 153
Tangled Threads	p. 153
Putnam's Magazine	p. 156
Who Should Read Alger? Alger and the Public Library	p. 157
The Public Library, and Its Choice of Books	p. 157
Sensational Fiction in Public Libraries	p. 158
Peccator: As to Novel-reading - A Confession	p. 160
Class Adaptation in the Selection of Books - The Fiction Question	p. 161
Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, Vermont: Annual Report	p. 162
Young Men's Association, Buffalo: Annual Report	p. 162
Unsigned Review: Books for Young People	p. 163
Alger's legacy: parodies and responses	p. 165
A Self-Made Man	p. 165
The Alger Complex	p. 169
Tom the Young Kidnapper, or, Pay Up and Live	p. 172
The Death of Horatio Alger	p. 176
Legendary Alger Was a Homosexual	p. 180
Demythologizing Alger	p. 182
Critical Essays	p. 199
Selling the Self-Made Woman	p. 199
"The Gentle Boy from the Dangerous Classes"; Pederasty, Domesticity, and Capitalism in Horatio Alger	p. 209
Pandering in the Public Sphere: Masculinity and the Market in Horatio Alger	p. 233
Freaks and the American Dream: Horatio Alger, P. T. Barnum, and the Art of Humbug	p. 254
Horatio Alger, Jr.: A Chronology	p. 277
Selected Bibliography	p. 281
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.