William Sydney Porter ( ) O. Henry

Facts about William Sydney Porter O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Though his father, Algernon Porter, was a doctor, the young boy did not receive much formal education. As a teenager, he worked as a pharmacist's assistant in his uncle's drugstore to help support his family. At 19, worried that he might be susceptible to the pneumonia that had killed his mother at a young age, he moved to Texas to take advantage of its warm, dry climate.

In Texas, he worked on a cattle ranch owned by friends of his family. In 1882, he married. In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined The Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897, he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. While in prison Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.

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. During the ten years before his death in 1910, he published over 300 stories Henry's first collection, Cabbages And Kings appeared in 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) included "The Last Leaf". Henry's best known work is perhaps the much anthologized "The Ransom of Red Chief", included in the collection Whirligigs (1910). The Heart Of The West (1907) presented tales of the Texas range. O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime.

 O. Henry died on June 5, 1910 in New York City at the age of forty seven. An alcoholic, he died virtually penniless.  O. Henry wrote with realistic detail based on his first- hand experiences both in Texas and in New York City.  He is known as the master of surprise endings.  Many of his stories contain a twist of plot based on irony or coincidence.  O, Henry gained worldwide acclaim as America's favorite short story writer.

The Gift of the Magi  "The Gift of the Magi" is one of O. Henry's most famous stories. Included in The Four Million, his first collection of short stories, in 1906, it has been anthologized many times since then.  The story contains many of the elements for which O. Henry is widely known, including poor, working-class characters, a humorous tone, realistic detail, and a surprise ending.  A major reason given for its enduring appeal is its affirmation of unselfish love. Such love, the story and its title suggest, is like the gifts given by the wise men, called Magi, who brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn Jesus.