SUCCESS STORIES IN THE 1800s AND EARLY 1900s

I’ve intentionally left Horatio Alger Jr books out of this list, even though he started the rags-to-riches genre. Any passing look at his Wikipedia profile will reveal some pretty sordid details about his personal life. He was the first in the secular school of “realism” without using Christian principles to guide the way to success. Or perhaps, like Franklin, he plagiarized those principles in a humanist way.

1. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838)

2. —. A Christmas Carol (1843)

3. E. P. Roe’s Barriers Burned Away (1872)

4. Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps (1896) – where “What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD) comes from

5. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908)

6. Harold Bell Wright’s The Eyes of the World (1914) – a Pilgrim’s Progress like rags-to-riches story

7. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books (1932–1943)