Getting to Know O. Henry!

• His birth name was William Sydney Porter.
• He was born in 1862 and died in 1910.

• He dropped out of school at age 15 to work at his uncle's drugstore.

• He founded a weekly humor magazine, titled The Rolling Stone.

• He was charged for embezzling funds from the First National Bank of Austin, TX in 1896. Instead of standing trial in a court of law, O. Henry fled to Honduras.

• After his release from prison, he moved to New York in 1901 to begin writing full time.
• Some of his most famous stories are The Gift of the Magi, The Furnished Room, and The Ransom of Red Chief.
• His method of story telling has influenced many modern stories and movies.

• At one point, O. Henry was writing at a rate of more than one stories per week.

• Over his entire lifetime, O. Henry published over 500 stories in several popular periodicals.

Below is a pciture of O. Henry:

This picture is of O. Henry with his wife and daughter in the early 1890s.

Image: http://schools.penncrest.org/staff/tdouglas/index.php/2009/12/13/the-gift-of-the-magi/

**All information was obtained through Microsoft Student Encarta 2009.**