O. Henry

Two writers who particularly represent the growth of the popular short story at the beginning of the twentieth century are O. Henry and Jack London, the first capturing the public taste through cleverly plotted comic stories and the second through stories of adventure and travel. Born in 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, William Sydney Porter, who took ‘O. Henry’ as his nom-de-plume, began publication of his own humorous weekly magazine, The Rolling Stone, which ran for a year in 1894. In 1898 he was tried for and found guilty of embezzling public funds from his job at the First National Bank in Austin, Texas, sentenced to five years in prison, and released after three years for good behaviour. While in prison he wrote several stories which were published in national magazines. During the remaining twelve years of his life he published stories in a number of magazines (Dispatch in Pittsburgh, and Ainslee's and Sunday World in New York, among others), and in twelve books, including Cabbages and Kings (1904, his first book) and The Four Million (1908, a collection of twenty-five new York stories which brought him international fame and popularity).

O. Henry's popularity and his literary reputation have fluctuated considerably. By 1920 nearly five million copies of his books had been sold in the United States, and he was widely read in England and Europe. Nearly a million copies were sold in Russia between 1924 and 1927.