Home » Languages » English (Sr. Secondary) » Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “O. Henry” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “O. Henry” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

O. Henry

(1862 – 1910)

Henry, pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. Typical for 0. 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. 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 0. 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. O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story 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 Tagdad-on the-Subway’.

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.

 

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