O Henry Biography and List of Works

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.

"It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are."

Porter was born in Greenboro, North Carolina. He grew up during the post-Civil War depression in the South and was poorly educated. His father was a doctor; his mother died when Porter was three. He left the school at the age of fifteen, 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 to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married.

In 1884 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began the 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 bank and O. Henry fled to Honduras. He returned to Austin the next year because his wife was dying. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling bank fund, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison, O. Henry 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 immediate 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 'Baghdad-on the-Subway.'

"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)

HEART OF THE WEST (1907) presented tales of the Texas range. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime. O. Hnery's last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health and financial problems. After his death from tuberculosis on June 5, 1910, in New York, appeared three more collections, SIXES AND SEVENS (1911), ROLLING STONES (1912) and WAIFS AND STRAYS (1917). Among Henry's best-known works is 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (see Howard Hawks and Nunnally Johnson). 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.

The Ransom of Red Chief - published in the collection Whirligigs in 1910. 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. O. Henry's humorous, energetic style shows the influence of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.

"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-defence, 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."

For further reading: O. Henry, ed. by Eugene Current-Garcia (1965); O. Henry, Short Story Writer by Lucas Longo (1982); 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) - Note: The colourful story of O.Henry's alleged bank fraud continues with an escape to New Orleans, then to Honduras, where he met one Al Jennings. He rambled in South America and Mexico on the proceeds of Jenning's robbery, and THEN returned to stand trial when news reached him of his wife's illness. - Other masters of short story: Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov - See also: Raymond Carver, Truman Capote.

CABBAGES AND KINGS, (1904)