Sink or Swim; or, Harry Raymond's Resolve

Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1870. No edition stated, but ad pages include titles after 1870. Very Good-. In gray cloth with gilt, yellow and black titles and illustrations on spine and front cover Some soiling and scuffing on covers and spine, but binding is still quite sound Original endpapers, though rear enpaper is cracking Age toning to text, but no marks or damage at all Very good overall

Horatio Alger Jr (1832 - 1899) was an American author who wrote young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through good works His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on the United States during the Gilded Age
All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme: a teenage boy improves his circumstances by virtuous behavior There is a "Horatio Alger myth" that the boy becomes wealthy through hard work, but this is inaccurate In the actual stories, invariably the cause of success is an accident that works to the boy's advantage after he conducts himself according to traditional virtues such as honesty, charity, and altruism The boy might return a large sum of lost money or rescue someone from an overturned carriage This brings the boyâ€"and his plightâ€"to the attention of a wealthy individual In one story, for example, a young boy is almost run over by a streetcar and a homeless orphan youth snatches him out of the way to safety The young boy's father turns out to be wealthy and adopts the orphan rescuer 388, 12 p publisher's ads pp.