Background of william sydney porter

• "A Municipal Report" which opens by quoting Frank Norris: "Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee!

  Both authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful and optimistic. In 1895 William worked as a columnist at the Houston Daily Post, but he was soon ordered to court in Austin on charges of embezzlement during his employment at First National Bank. In addition to his knowledge of the frontier, the author became proficient in Spanish, memorized most of Webster’s dictionary, and he started writing stories of the wild west.

  His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–1888) and Mary Jane Virginia Swain Porter (1833–1865). Henry stories are famous for their surprise endings; such an ending is now often referred to as an "O.

  Flight and return

  Porter's father-in-law posted bail to keep Porter out of jail, but the day before Porter was due to stand trial on July 7, 1896, he fled, first to New Orleans and later to Honduras.

  Henry' on Himself, Life, and Other Things. He also became editor of a humorous weekly called Rolling Stone, and eventually quit his bank job to edit it full time. Henry: a Study of the Short Fiction, 1993. He was sentenced to five years in a Columbus, Ohio prison. Unwilling to arrest his old friend, he went off to get another officer to make the arrest.

Origin of his pen name

Porter gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name.^[3] In 1909, he gave an interview to The New York Times, in which he gave an account of it:

It was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O.

Henry. A solo project, William devoted most of his time to writing and drawing for the new magazine, eventually quitting his bank job. He was born on September 11, 1862 along Polecat Creek in Centre Community, North Carolina. O. Henry short stories are known for wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and clever twist endings. Young William Sydney Porter worked in an uncle’s drug store until he moved at nineteen to Texas where he held a variety of jobs including paying and receiving teller at the First National Bank of Austin.

He was only three years old when his mother and brother passed away from tuberculosis.

He goes to a town bank to check it over before he robs it.

Legacy

The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. It was during his time at his uncle’s drugstore that he fell in love with Sara Lindsay Coleman or “Sall.” 19 years old at the time, William was so shy that he could never ask Sall out on a date.

His trial was delayed for two years first by his escape to New Orleans and Honduras, then by his wife’s illness and death.

Although it is not known for certain whether Porter was an embezzler or merely an incompetent bookkeeper, he was sentenced to five years in the Ohio Penitentiary.

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopediastandards.