Fairy Tales and stories for childrens. Book 21

Fairy Tales and stories for childrens. Book 21: 1. Ben The Luggage Boy; or, Among the Wharves; 2. Rufus and Rose; or, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready; 3. Oliver Twist.


1. Ben The Luggage Boy; or, Among the Wharves.

Published: 1870.

Fifth volume in the Ragged Dick Series.

If you've ever used the phrase "rags to riches," you owe that to Horatio Alger, Jr. (1832-1899), who popularized the idea through his fictional writings that also served as a theme for the way America viewed itself as a country. Alger's works about poor boys rising to better living conditions through hard work, determination, courage, honesty, and morals was popular with both adults and younger readers. 

Alger's writings happened to correspond with America's Gilded Age, a time of increasing prosperity in a nation rebuilding from the Civil War. His lifelong theme of rags to riches continued to gain popularity but has gradually lessened since the 1920s. Still, readers today often come across "Ragged Dick "and stories like it in school.

Ben runs away from home and lives on the streets of New York City for years. He learns how to survive and finds work as a newsboy and as a baggage smasher, and works to make enough money to put away into the bank.


2. Rufus and Rose; or, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready.

Published: 1870.

Sixth and final volume in the Ragged Dick Series.

Rufus and Rose, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready is the last volume of the Ragged Dick Series, a series of rags to riches stories of boys working hard and achieving the American dream of wealth. Alger wrote these to help instill the principle of Strive and Succeed, Personal Growth and Work to Achieve the American Dream. Horatio Alger, Jr. authored about seventy books. He was the son of a clergyman, graduated from Harvard. His stories are pure, inspiring and as endearing today as they were when first published.


3. Oliver Twist.

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by Charles Dickens, and was first published as a serial 1837–9. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets, which is led by the elderly criminal Fagin.

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid–nineteenth century.