Ralph D. Gardner

1979. Ralph D. Gardner's exhaustive compendium on Horatio Alger. If you're a collector you need this for the bibliography alone. Alger's life is almost like the heroes of his books. He's a poor parson's son and sickly. He goes to Harvard expecting to be a minister like his father, but writes whenever he can. It takes him a while to achieve success, but when he writes Ragged Dick, he hits upon his famous rags-to-riches formula. He goes on to be the best-selling American author possibly ever. I'll have to see if I can find any current statistics on that...Wikipedia lists him as around 20th all time now.… (mehr)