Cast Upon the Breakers

Horatio Alger, Jr. Foreword Ralph D. Gardner

ISBN 10: 0385083866 / ISBN 13: 9780385083867

Published by Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1974

About this Item

Signed by person(s) connected with book. Signed by Gardner Dust Jacket w/ minor tears. Dust Jack in mylar guard. Quantity Available: 1. Category: Literature & Literary; Signed by person(s) connected with book. ISBN: 0385083866. ISBN/EAN: 9780385083867. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 22907.

Seller Inventory # 22907

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cast Upon the Breakers
• Publisher: Doubleday, Garden City, NY
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385083866
• ISBN 13: 9780385083867
• Binding: Hardcover (Original Cloth)
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature & Literary

About this title

Synopsis

Horatio Alger was a man who lived with a terrible secret -- a secret dark and troubling -- something shameful, in fact. As a young man, that secret took hold of his life, and he left the life and the life's work he had made for himself in Boston, to take up residence among the poor in New York City. Ensconced there, he worked among the poor -- and took to writing tales of their success. His novels captured the imagination of a nation bursting with a new wave of immigrants who'd come to our shores -- come to the very port of New York City that was Alger's new home. He used the wealth that came to him to help the poor folks who he loved, and took his secret to the grave. It escaped from there, of course. You can find it if you look a bit. But for the purpose of this fine novel of the rise to riches, it will remain unstated . . . Alger wrote approximately one hundred thirty-five "dime novels." His forte was rags-to-riches stories, describing how boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. His characters don't achieve great wealth, but rather stability, security, and a place in society which they earn through their efforts. He is considered significant figure in the history of American cultural and social ideals. Bestsellers in their own time, Alger's books rivaled those of Mark Twain in popularity. This classical work of fiction has been lovingly enhanced with stunning illuminated initiums and insular art.

About the Author

Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, The United States January 13, 1832 Died on July 18, 1899 Genre: Children's, Young Adult Fiction Horatio Alger, Jr. (January 13, 1832 – July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American author, most famous for his novels following the adventures of bootblacks, newsboys, peddlers, buskers, and other impoverished children in their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort. His novels about boys who succeed under the tutelage of older mentors were hugely popular in their day. Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister, Alger entered Harvard University at the age of sixteen. Following graduation, he briefly worked in education before touring Europe for almost a year. He then entered the Harvard Divinity School, and, in 1864, took a position at a Unitarian church in Brewster, Massachusetts. Two years later, he resigned following allegations he had sexual relations with two teenage boys.[1] He retired from the ministry and moved to New York City where he formed an association with the Newsboys Lodging House and other agencies offering aid to impoverished children. His sympathy for the working boys of the city, coupled with the moral values learned at home, were the basis of his many juvenile rags to riches novels illustrating how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. This widely held view involves Alger's characters achieving extreme wealth and the subsequent remediation of their "old ghosts." Alger is noted as a significant figure in the history of American cultural and social ideals. He died in 1899. The first full-length Alger biography was commissioned in 1927 and published in 1928, and along with many others that borrowed from it later proved to be heavily fictionalized parodies perpetuating hoaxes and made up anecdotes that "would resemble the tell-all scandal biographies of the time."[2] Other biographies followed, sometimes citing the 1928 hoax as fact. In the last decades of the twentieth century a few more reliable biographies were published that attempt to correct the errors and fictionalizations of the past.