From Serial to Novel: Horatio Alger’s Revisions in Ragged Dick

When Horatio Alger, Jr., published the serialized version of “Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York Among the Boot Blacks” (1867), he was already a modestly successful professional writer with three juvenile novels to his credit. Upon introduction the eponymous hero is as poor as Huck Finn—homeless, he sleeps in boxes filled with straw in alleys and wears tattered clothes. Dick’s only possession is his bootblacking box and, “careless of his earnings,” he enjoys gambling and splurging on cigars, oyster dinners, and Bowery shows. After Frank Whitney, a well-to-do country boy, urges him in the fourth installment to “try to be somebody, and grow up into a respectable member of society,” the hero begins his slow climb up the social ladder. He is taught by his friend Henry Fosdick to read and write; he begins to attend church; he becomes more frugal and industrious; and by the end of the story he is hired as a counting-room clerk, moves with Fosdick into more respectable quarters, and changes his name to Richard Hunter, Esq.

The serialization of “Ragged Dick” was so popular that by November 1867 Alger had begun to draft a sequel.¹ Nevertheless, some readers complained that the twelve installments already in print were “too short in each number.”² In response, the editors of the magazine announced in March 1868 that Alger had “carefully re-written and enlarged” the serial for publication as a book.”³ The expanded version was half again as long as the original—some forty-eight thousand words compared to about thirty-two thousand in the serial. Most of the emendations were cosmetic—e.g., corrections in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. In particular, Alger tamed Dick’s colloquial speech, changing “stamps” to “money,” “’minds” to “reminds,” “b’leeve” to “believe,” “Queen Victory” to “Queen Victoria,” “know’d” to “known,” “tain’t” to “’tisn’t,” “p’liceman” to “policeman,” “avenoo” to “avenue,” “libural” to “liberal,” etc. Additionally, Alger changed the subtitle of the novel from “Street Life in New York” to “Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks,” and he added much of the humor to the novel in revision. Most of chapter V and the beginning of chapter VI, also added in revision, develop the guidebook quality of the tale and warn readers to beware of the scams or confidence games common on the streets of the city. The novel was apparently set in type from revised and corrected copies of the pages of the serialization in Student in Schoolmate, moreover. A typographical error in the serial was retained in the novel (“trowse[r]s” in chapter VII).

Some of Alger’s other changes to the serial were more substantial. He inserted the story of Johnny Nolan’s abusive father and other privations in chapter II and the episode in which Fosdick teaches Dick to pray in chapter XVI. He revised three of the chapter breaks in the serial to omit the cliffhangers common to serializations, improve the continuity of the narrative, and to standardize the lengths of the chapters, as follows:

Serialization in Student and Schoolmate	Novel chapters
January 1867 (chapter 1)	1–2
February 1867 (chapter 2)	3–4
March 1867 (chapter 3)	4–5, and into 6
April 1867 (chapter 4)	6 into 7
May 1867 (chapter 5)	7–8, into 9
June 1867 (chapter 6)	9–10
July 1867 (chapter 7)	11 into 12
August 1867 (chapter 8)	12–13
September 1867 (chapter 9)	14–15
October 1867 (chapter 10)	16–17
November 1867 (chapter 11)	18–19
December 1867 (chapter 12)	Part of 20, 26–27

Many of the other interpellations in the narrative consist of moral injunctions: Alger’s counsel to his readers in chapter I to avoid smoking and gambling, Frank’s admonition to Dick at the close of chapter VIII “to get as good an education as you can,” and Mr. Whitney’s advice to Dick in chapter XI to “earn your living in the way you are accustomed to,” “avoid extravagance, and save up a little money if you can” until...