Horatio Alger Jr.

Horatio Alger Jr. (1832–1899) was an American writer of fiction for boys whose name became a byword for rising from poverty through hard work. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, he served briefly as a Unitarian minister before moving to New York, where he wrote Ragged Dick in 1868 and more than a hundred similar stories of poor boys, newsboys and bootblacks who succeed through honesty, thrift, pluck and a timely stroke of luck. Several books issued under his name after his death, such as Randy of the River, were completed by Edward Stratemeyer.