This early work by Eva March Tappan was originally published in 1921 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'American Hero Stories' is an educational book on the important individuals in the history of the United States. It contains five accounts of voyagers and explorers, ranging from Columbus to Lewis and Clark. Eva March Tappan was born on 26th December 1854, in Blackstone, Massachusetts, United States. Tappan began her literary career writing about famous characters from history in works such as 'In the Days of William the Conqueror' (1901), and 'In the Days of Queen Elizabeth' (1902). She then developed an interest in children's books, writing her own and publishing collections of classic tales.

Story of the life of Alfred the Great, how at twenty-two he inherited a land overrun by savage pirates,-a restless ignorant, defenseless land, and how he fought the Danes and restored the country to a condition of peace and safety. When he inherited his kingdom at twenty-two, the king was not safe in his palace, the priest in his church. There was little opportunity for agriculture; laws were not executed; schools had disappeared, the very wish to learn had disappeared; the whole land was rapidly sinking into ignorance and barbarism, and was exhausted by its sickening dread of the horrors that the next moment might bring. To restore a land in such a condition to peace and quiet and safety and freedom from fear of harm, to establish churches and schools, to make just laws, and see to it that they were justly executed-a man might well have been proud to have succeeded in doing any one of these things; and for the man who brought about all these good results, no praise can be too high. To him who, in the midst of all the fighting and the weariness and the anxiety and the temptation and the responsibility, lived a calm, simple, unselfish, blameless life, to him of all the sovereigns of England who have served their country well, may the title, "The Great," most justly be given.