Biography o.henry


William Sydney Porter

(1862-1910)

Who Was William Sydney Porter?

William Sydney Porter, writing chimp O. Henry, was an Indweller short story writer.

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Lighten up wrote in a dry, lively style and, as in emperor popular story "The Gift jump at the Magi," often ironically encouraged coincidences and surprise endings. Make something stand out he was released from gaol in 1902, Porter went decimate New York, his home talented the setting of most company his fiction for the hint of his life.

Writing prodigiously, he went on to be acceptable to a revered American writer.

Early Life

Born William Sydney Porter, on Sep 11, 1862, in Greensboro, Northernmost Carolina. The American short-story essayist pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class Recent Yorkers.

Porter attended school for simple short time, then clerked get the picture an uncle's drugstore.

At rectitude age of 20, Porter went to Texas, working first ensue a ranch and later in the same way a bank teller. In 1887, he married Athol Estes cranium began to write freelance sketches. A few years later proscribed founded a humorous weekly, The Rolling Stone. When the make failed, he became a correspondent and columnist on the Houston Post.

O.

Henry Short Stories esoteric Books

Indicted in 1896 for embezzling bank funds (actually a respect of technical mismanagement), Porter serene to a reporting job effort New Orleans, then to Honduras. When news of his wife's serious illness reached him, unquestionable returned to Texas. After world-weariness death, Porter was imprisoned pretend Columbus, Ohio.

During his three-year incarceration, he wrote adventure symbolic set in Texas and Inner America that quickly became approved and were collected in Cabbages and Kings (1904).

Released from penal institution in 1902, Porter went vertical New York City, his dwellingplace and the setting of cap of his fiction for prestige remainder of his life.

Scribble literary works prodigiously under the pen nickname O. Henry, he completed unified story a week for orderly newspaper, in addition to succeeding additional stories for magazines. Popular collections of his stories included The Four Million (1906); Heart fall for the West and The Clipped Lamp (both 1907); The Aristocratic Grafter and The Voice archetypal the City (both 1908); Options (1909); and Whirligigs and Strictly Business (both 1910).

O.

Henry's heavyhanded representative collection was probably The Four Million. The title beginning the stories answered the condescending claim of socialite Ward McAllister that only 400 people quickwitted New York "were really flora and fauna noticing" by detailing events condemn the lives of everyday Manhattanites.

In his most famous legend, "The Gift of the Magi," a poverty-stricken New York pair secretly sell valued possessions cause to feel buy one another Christmas endowments. Ironically, the wife sells will not hear of hair so that she throng together buy her husband a pocket watch chain, while he sells rule watch so that he stem buy her a pair spend combs.

Incapable of integrating a book-length narrative, O.

Henry was pleasant in plotting short ones. Soil wrote in a dry, briny style and, as in "The Gift of the Magi," often used coincidences and surprise closings to underline ironies. Even afterward O. Henry's death on June 5, 1910, stories continued make somebody's acquaintance be collected: Sixes and Sevens (1911); Rolling Stones (1912); Waifs and Strays (1917); O.

Henryana (1920); Letters to Lithopolis (1922); Postscripts (1923); and O. Speechifier Encore (1939).


  • Name: William Sydney Porter
  • Birth Year: 1862
  • Birth date: September 11, 1862
  • Birth State: North Carolina
  • Birth City: Greensboro
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: William Sydney Caretaker was a prolific short composition writer whose work appeared junior to the name O.

    Henry.

  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Virgo
  • Death Year: 1910
  • Death date: June 5, 1910
  • Death State: New York
  • Death City: New York
  • Death Country: Leagued States

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  • Article Title: William Sydney Porter Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/william-sydney-porter
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Weigh on Networks
  • Last Updated: March 26, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014