Mark Mason's Victory

by Horatio Alger Jr.

Horatio Alger, Jr. (1832-1899) was a 19th-century American author who wrote approximately 135 novels. Many of his works have been described as rags to riches stories, 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. He is noted as a significant figure in the history of American cultural and social ideals, even though his novels are rarely read these days. After attending Harvard Divinity School from 1857 to 1860, he took a ten-month tour of Europe and produced works of a patriotic nature. Alger's empathy with the young working men, coupled with the moral values he learned at home, formed the basis of the first novel in his Ragged Dick (1867). The book was an immediate success, spurring a vast collection of sequels and similar novels, including Luck and Pluck (1869) and Tattered Tom (1871). Amongst his other works are Five Hundred Dollars; or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret (1890) and The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus (1900).

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Joshua]

The American dream as realized by this book:
1. Be poor.
2. Fight crime and be good (Run dynamite heroically outside the bank to a safe location if the day calls for it).
3. Stand on your gosh darn principles by not selling yourself short to get that extra $$$.
4. Stop more criminals from getting away with generally rascal-iness.
5. Get rewarded a high price stock.
6. Be smug about people thinking you're poor when you have that sweet, sweet stock just climbing and climbing 📈.
7. Refuse to lower your principles and sell your inheritance because it's your birthright and you are NO Esau!
8. STONKS The stock has climbed high enough, time to cash out.
9. Be rich.
10. Old lady who you helped when you were poor dies. Guess who she willed her inheritance $$$ to???? STONKS AGAIN.

The end.