Rufus and Rose

Rufus and Rose, or The Fortunes of Rough and Ready is one of Horatio Alger’s many novels in his Ragged Dick series, the connected sequence that includes the more famous Ragged Dick and Mark the Match Boy. The protagonist is Rufus, sometimes called Rough and Ready, a young newsboy on the streets of post Civil War New York City who supports his small sister Rose by selling papers and taking whatever odd jobs he can pick up. The novel follows the standard Alger formula. A young protagonist of modest origins faces hardship, behaves with honesty and courage, and slowly works his way up through honest labor and the kind of timely good fortune that the genre always provided.

What makes Rufus and Rose slightly different from the better known entries in the series is the central role of Rose, Rufus’s young sister. The sibling relationship gives the novel an emotional anchor that the more solo focused Alger novels sometimes lack. Rufus’s protectiveness toward Rose drives many of his choices, and her safety becomes the standing pressure that motivates everything he does. The villains of the piece, including the kind of street crooks and disreputable adults who tend to populate Alger’s New York, threaten not just Rufus but Rose, which gives the climactic confrontation a stake beyond just the protagonist’s own success.

Alger’s New York settings remain one of the more interesting aspects of his work. The post Civil War American city was a place of rapid growth, sharp inequality, and a kind of street level visible poverty that nineteenth century novelists were just beginning to take as serious literary subject. Alger romanticized the situation in some ways but also rendered specific geographic and social details that retain real historical interest.

For scholars of nineteenth century American children’s literature, of urban fiction in the post Civil War period, or of the cultural construction of the self made man, Alger’s catalogue is essential. Rufus and Rose is a representative entry and a fair sample of the Ragged Dick series.