Alger, Horatio Jr. - Carol Nackenoff (essay date 1994)

Carol Nackenoff (essay date 1994)

SOURCE: "Reading Alger: Searching for Alger's Audience in the Literary Marketplace," in The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse. Oxford University Press, 1994, pp.181-203.

[In the following chapter, Nackenoff identifies Alger's readership within the changing historical context of increased literacy and cheaper availability of books.]

Your kind and flattering letter reached me just as I was starting for the Geysers … It gives me great pleasure to find that I have friends and appreciative readers among the girls, as well as among the boys, and on the shores of the Pacific, as well as the Atlantic. I hope at an early date to write a story located in California, and I shall be glad if it proves acceptable to my friends here.

Alger to Miss Harriet Jackson, March 3, 18771

The marked surge in the production, dissemination, and...

[The entire page is 12973 words long]

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