O. Henry (1862-1910) was originally born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

As a young man, he moved to Austin, Texas where he worked as a bank teller. He moved again to Houston, Texas in 1895 and became a newspaper columnist.

In 1896, however, he was called back to Austin, where he was charged with embezzling money from the bank where he had worked. Not wanting to go to prison for his crime, O. Henry fled to Honduras, and stayed there for six months before returning to the United States.

Upon his return, the court tried him and put him in an Ohio prison for three years. While in prison, he began writing short stories and it is there that he took the pen-name O. Henry for his writings.

After his release from prison in 1901, he moved to New York, which is the setting for many of his stories. He is the author of over 250 stories and is most famous for his use of surprise or 'twist' endings. Notice the twists and surprises in the endings to "The Last Leaf", "The Green Door", and perhaps his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi"

Biography

William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born on a plantation in Greensboro, North Carolina on September 11, 1862. In 1882, prompted by ill health, he moved to a ranch in West Texas. Two years later, he moved to Austin where he resided until 1898. During Porter's early years in the city, he held several jobs. He was a pharmacist at the Morley Drug Store, a bookkeeper for Joe Harrell, and later, a clerk at Maddox Brothers and Anderson, general land agents. As a bachelor, he enjoyed singing with the Hill City Quartet, known for serenading young women on the streets of Austin. The group also entertained at local weddings, church festivals, and picnics. Porter was a frequenter of the Bismark Saloon, his favorite "watering hole".

In 1887, Porter eloped with seventeen year old Athol Estes, an Austin native, who was impressed with both his singing and drawing abilities. They were married at Flower Hill, the home of Reverend R. K. Smoot. Porter's status as the head of a new household motivated him to take a job at the Texas Land Office, where he translated his skills as a cartoonist into cartography. Porter's maps, some of which are embellished with topical sketches and landscapes, are still on file at the General Land Office in Austin.

Will and Athol had two children, an infant son who died in 1888 and Margaret Worth Porter, born in 1889. Shortly after, Athol's health began to deteriorate from tuberculosis. Will pursued his interest in writing and illustrated a book, Indian Depredations in Texas, by J. W. Wilbarger. In 1891, Porter left his job at the Texas Land Office and moved on to become a bank teller at the First National Bank of Austin, earning $100 a month.

The Rolling Stone, his 1894 venture in writing and publishing a newspaper, gained a healthy circulation of about 1000 in a city of 11,000. Despite public interest, Porter was unable to make a profit and stopped production after a year. Further disappointments ensued when discrepancies in his accounting at the bank amounted to over $4000, demanding his resignation. Porter removed himself to Houston where he wrote a column for the Houston Post. To avoid an embezzlement trial, he fled to New Orleans and embarked on a steamer to Honduras. In his desperate situation, he impulsively planned to wait out the statute of limitations in Central America, but he abandoned this plan when he got word that his wife was about to die. He returned to Austin to care for her and to await his trial. Shortly after his wife's death in 1897, William Porter was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in the federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio and he never returned to Texas. After his release from prison, Porter moved briefly to Pittsburgh and then to New York City, where he established residency.

While in prison, Will Porter adopted the pen name O. Henry and began his career as a short story writer. His work was prolific but began to decline, along with his health, after 1907. O. Henry died in New York City in 1910, prior to his forty-eighth birthday. His legacy continues in the O. Henry Award, one of the most prestigious short story prizes in America.

Prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. Typical for O. Henry's stories is a twist of plot which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance. Although some critics were not so enthusiastic about his work, the public loved it.

"He wrote love stories, a thing I have always kept free from, holding the belief that the well-known and popular sentiment is not properly matter for publication, but something to be privately handled by the alienist and the florist." (from 'The Plutonian Fire')

O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

"It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are." (from The Octopus Marooned')

In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the First National Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller. When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial. Little is known about Porter's stay in Central America. It is said, that he met one Al Jennings, and rambled in South America and Mexico on the proceeds of Jenning's robbery. After hearing news that his wife was dying, he returned in 1897 to Austin. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison, Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, 'Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking' (1899), appeared in McClure's Magazine. The stories of adventure in the U.S. Southwest and in Central America gained an immediately success among readers. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry. According to some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a warder called Orrin Henry. It also could be an abbreviation of the name of a French pharmacist, Eteinne-Ossian Henry, found in the U.S. Dispensatory, a reference work Porter used when he was in the prison pharmacy.

O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry's first collection, CABBAGES AND KINGS, appeared in 1904. The second, THE FOUR MILLION, was published two years later and included his well-known stories 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'The Furnished Room'. THE TRIMMED LAMP (1907) explored the lives of New Yorkers and included 'The Last Leaf' - the city itself Henry liked to call 'Bagdad-on the-Subway.' In one of his stories, 'One Dollar's Worth', O. Henry deals with the judicial system. Judge Derwent receives a letter from an ex-convict, in which the writer, 'Rattlesnake' threatens his daughter and the district attorney, Littlefield. A young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, is accused of passing a counterfeit silver dollar, made principally of lead. Rafael's girl, Joya Treviñas, tells Littlefield that he is innocent - she was sick, and needed medicine, and that was the reason why Rafael used the dollar. Littlefield refuses to help, and Joya says that "it the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz." When he drives out of the town with Nancy Derwent, they meet Mexico Sam, the writer of the letter. He starts to shoot them from distance with his rifle. Littlefield can't hurt him with his own gun which has only tiny pellets. Then he remembers Joya's words, and manages hit Mexico Sam, who falls from his horse dead as a rattlesnake. Next morning in the court he tells: "'I shot him,' said the district attorney, 'with Exhibit A of your counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me - and somebody else - that it was as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil, can't you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives? Miss Derwent wants to know.'"

Henry's best known work is perhaps the much anthologized 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (see Howard Hawks and Nunnally Johnson), published in the collection Whirligigs in 1910. O. Henry's humorous, energetic style shows the influence of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce. The story tells about two kidnappers, who make off with the young son of a prominent man. They find out that the child is a real nuisance. In the end they agree to pay the boy's father to take him back. - "Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade. but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."

HEART OF THE WEST (1907) presented western stories, of which 'The Last of the Troubadours' J. Frank Dobie named "the best range story in American fiction." 'The Caballero's Way' featured as a character the Cisco Kid. During his life time, O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories. His last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He was a fast writer, like the Russian Anton Checkhov (1860-1904), but drinking on average two quarts of whiskey daily, did not improve the quality of his work. In 1907 O. Henry married Sara Lindsay Coleman, also born in Greensboro. The marriage was not happy, and they separated a year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York. Three more collections, SIXES AND SEVENS (1911), ROLLING STONES (1912) and WAIFS AND STRAYS (1917), appeared posthumously. In 1918 the O. Henry Memorial Awards were established to be given annually to the best magazine stories, the winners and leading contenders to be published in an annual volume.

For further reading: O. Henry Biography by Alphonse Smith (1916); O. Henry: The Man and His Work by Eugene Hudson (1949); The Heart of O. Henry by Dale Kramer (1954); Alias O.Henry: A Biography of William S. Porter by Gerald Langford (1957); O. Henry, ed. by Eugene Current-Garcia (1965); O. Henry, Short Story Writer by Lucas Longo (1982); O. Henry: A Biography of William Sydney Porter by David Stuart (1987); O. Henry Biography by Charles A. Smith (1992); O. Henry; A Study of the Short Fiction by Eugene Current-Garcia (1993); O. Henry, ed. by Harold Bloom (1999); The Amazing Genius of O. Henry by Nicholas V. Lindsay and Arthur W. Page (2001) - See also: Raymond Carver, Truman Capote - Suom: Suomeksi O. Henryltä on julkaistu valikoima Tietäjien lahja (1979).

Selected works:

• CABBAGES AND KINGS, 1904
• THE FOUR MILLION, 1906
• THE TRIMMED LAMP, 1907
• HEART OF THE WEST, 1907
• THE VOICE OF THE CITY, 1908
• THE GENTLE GRAFTER, 1908
• ROADS OF DESTINY, 1909
• LO, 1909 (play, with Franklin P. Adams, music by A. Baldwin Sloane)
• OPTIONS, 1909
• STRICTLY BUSINESS, 1910
• WHIRLIGIGS, 1910
• LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE, 1910
• THE TWO WOMEN, 1910
• SIXES AND SEVENS, 1911
• ROLLING STONES, 1912
• WAIFS AND STRAYS, 1917
• THE COMPLETE WRITING OF O. HENRY, 1918 (14 vols.)
• O. HENRYANA, 1920
• SELECTED STORIES, 1922 (ed. by Alphonse Smith)
• LETTERS TO LITHOPOLIS, FROM O.HENRY TO MABEL WAGNALLS, 1922
• POSTSCRIPTS, 1923
• THE BEST OF O. HENRY, 1929
• MORE OF O. HENRY, 1933
• O. HENRY ENCORE, 1936
• O. HENRY'S NEW YORK, 1940
• THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1945 (ed. by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell)
• THE POCKET BOOK OF O. HENRY, 1948 (ed. by Harry Hansen)
• COPS AND ROBBERS, 1948 (ed. by Ellery Queen)
• COMPLETE WORKS OF O HENRY, 1953 (2 vols.)
• O. HENRY WESTERNS, 1961 (ed. by Patrick Thornhill)
• THE STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1965 (ed.by Harry Hansen)
• FOUR MILLION & OTHER STORIES, 1976
• COLLECTED STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1986
• THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF O. HENRY, 1994