- Born
- 1832
- Died
- 1899
Summary
Alger was born at Chelsea, Massachusetts, entering Harvard at 16 and going on to become a minister of the Unitarian Church. After sex scandal involving teenage boys he resigned from his position and moved to New York, where he worked to support impoverished children. His first popular work, Ragged Dick, was serialised initially, and then published in book form in 1868. He was extraordinarily prolific, writing countless popular novels for boys that were reported to have sold over a hundred million copies. Several of Alger's works were set in the Australian goldfields, including The Nugget Finders (189-) and In a New World (1893), but it is uncertain whether he spent time here.