Word: horatio
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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STRUGGLING UPWARD AND OTHER WORKS -Horatio Alger Jr.-Crown Publishers...
Nothing recedes like success. In the field of juvenile literature, Horatio Alger Jr., four of whose novels have just been reissued in this volume, was once regarded as the most successful writer who ever lived. Directly or indirectly he influenced the life of every U.S. town boy born between 1870 and 1900. Farm boys had less time and money for fiction, but if they did read stories, they read Alger; thousands of them imitated his heroes by going to Manhattan to seek their fortunes. But Alger's books lost most of their public during World...
Successful Failure. Although he was a great success by popular standards, the real Alger was a failure by his own, and his father's rules. Horatio Sr., a Unitarian clergyman in Chelsea, Mass., wanted his oldest son to become a great Boston preacher like Dr. William Channing or Edward Everett Hale. He made the boy read Plato and Josephus (in translation) at the age of eight, and taught him Latin at nine. When parishioners called, Father Alger would ask, "What are you going to be, Horatio?" Horatio Jr. would stutter: "I shall be a t-teacher of the ways...
...Harvard, Horatio was the smallest man (5 ft. 2) in the class of 1852, ranked eighth in his studies and wrote the class ode. As a senior, Horatio noted in his diary: "Am reading Moby Dick, and find it exciting. What a thrilling life the literary must be! ... Would it be desirable for me to take up writing as a life work? The satisfaction resulting from a beautiful story must be inspiring-a story that rouses readers to a new sense of the fine things of life." From that moment his ambition was fixed: he would write the great American...
...Navy!" Despite all this, the world-according-to-Forester would be different today if Hornblower had not suddenly debarked at the port of Riga and, waving his zoo-guinea gold-hilted sword, led a "flank attack [that] thwarted Bonaparte's schemes to conquer the world." "To Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower and the British Navy!" cried the Tsar, raising a noggin of Admiralty rum. "To the Navy," responded Hornblower, "guardian of the liberties of the world...