To go ‘from rags to riches’ is to rise from poverty to wealth, often against the odds and through a mixture of effort, ambition and luck. The phrase is used of real people, such as an entrepreneur who started with nothing and built a fortune, and of fictional ones, where a poor and often orphaned hero ends up rich and respected. It carries a sense of transformation, moving from the literal rags of the poor to the comfort and status that riches bring, and it is almost always used approvingly, as a story of deserved success rather than luck alone.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘rags to riches’?
The expression is relatively recent, dating from the late 19th century, though it is not known who actually coined it. It seems to have entered use by the 1880s, but the first exact instance of the wording has not been traced.
The phrase became strongly associated with the American author Horatio Alger (1834-1899), who is said to have written the first documented rags-to-riches stories. He produced around 130 novels built on a single recurring theme: a poor hero who rises from his lowly position through hard work, thrift and pluck to win wealth and happiness. The pattern was so consistent across his books that his name became shorthand for the whole idea of self-made success through virtue and effort.
The specific term “Horatio Alger hero” as a synonym for a rags-to-riches figure did not appear in print until 1926, decades after Alger’s novels were published. This shows that the phrase’s close association with Alger built up gradually rather than being fixed from the start.
The underlying story, of someone moving from poverty to wealth, is of course much older than the idi