Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

Lives written to prove a thesis: Peabody, Watt, Palissy, Mozart, Faraday, Lincoln and a dozen more who began with nothing. Sarah Knowles Bolton wrote several such collections for American children in the 1880s, and chose men whose difficulties were financial rather than romantic. The Palissy chapter, in which he burns the furniture to fire his kiln, is the one children remember. Sixty plates after Murillo, Eakins and others follow the theme of boys at the start of life, from a dory on the water to the young Palissy at his kiln.