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O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, b. Greensboro, N.C., Sept. 11, 1862, d. June 5, 1910, a popular American short-story writer famous for his surprise endings. With little formal education Porter left (1882) North Carolina for Texas, where he worked as a ranch hand, bookkeeper, bank teller, and, eventually, as the editor of a humorous weekly, The Rolling Stone. Indicted (1894) for embezzling funds from a bank in Austin and arrested in 1896, Porter protested his innocence but fled to Honduras, and later to South America. He returned to Austin in 1897, stood trial, and was convicted (1898), after which he served more than three years in the federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. There he wrote short stories under various pseudonyms; "O. Henry" finally superseded all others. His first published short story was "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking."

Following his release (1901) from prison, O. Henry lived in Pittsburgh for a short time but in 1902 settled in New York, a city he came to love and consider his own, and that he celebrated in his second collection of stories, The Four Million (1906), with its still-popular tale "The Gift of the Magi." (O. Henry's first collection, Cabbages and Kings, was published in 1904.) There followed in rapid succession eight more collections, published from 1907 to 1910. Financial problems and alcoholism contributed to O. Henry's early death in 1910, yet enough material was left unpublished for three additional volumes of stories to appear posthumously.

Clearly O. Henry wrote too much and too fast. He was also addicted to the surprise ending, a type of story that delighted the readers of his day but has long since been out of fashion. Nonetheless, his comic ability, displayed in "The Ransom of Red Chief" (1910) and elsewhere, is undoubted, and his sympathetic understanding of the common person ensures his reputation as a writer of permanent interest.

Hollywood recognized his talents by filming five of his stories, in O. Henry's Full House (1952). And, to memorialize his place in American literature, in 1918 the Society of Arts and Sciences established the O. Henry Award, which was to be given to the authors of the best stories printed each year in American magazines. The first collection of award stories was published in book form in 1919 by Doubleday and Co., Inc., under the title Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Doubleday has continued to choose and publish Prize Stories yearly. Among the many writers honored by the award at early stages in their careers have been Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Flannery O'Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Bibliography: Blansfield, K. C., Cheap Rooms and Restless Hearts (1988); Current-Garcia, E., O. Henry (1993); Langford, G., Alias O. Henry (1957; repr. 1983); O'Quinn, T. E., and Porter, J. L., Time to Write (1986); Smith, C. A., O. Henry (1992).