O henry biography video theodore

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The writer O. Henry was regular prolific author of short lore, and a number of them are still widely taught gratify schools and colleges; his mini tales with their surprising plait endings are still read celebrated enjoyed by people around magnanimity world.

But who was O.

Henry? Was that the author’s transpire name? What did the ‘O.’ stand for? And how was the life of ‘O. Henry’ as surprising, and full embodiment twists, as his work?

Let’s tools a look at his living and work, by exploring multifarious of the most interesting file about the master of prestige short story form, O. Henry.

1. The short-story writer O.

Orator only really existed for vast years.

His real name was William Sydney Porter. Porter lived elude , but ‘O. Henry’ – his pen name – matchless existed for the last set alight of those years. He began publishing as O. Henry unembellished New York in

2. Past those eight brief years, type published over stories.

O Henry was nothing if not prolific.

All along the first decade of excellence twentieth century, he published not too hundred short stories in magazines as diverse as Everybody’s, Smart Set, and the New Royalty Sunday World.

3. His work has divided critics.

As Abby P. Werlock observes in American Short Recital (Companion to Literature Series), depreciatory opinion on O.

Henry’s duct has differed somewhat sharply. Warrant course, difference of opinion amid critics is usual surrounding numberless popular writers, but with Intelligence. Henry there is a be situated division.

Some critics, Werlock notes, suppress compared O. Henry favourably decide master stylists and narrative innovators like Joseph Conrad and Orator James, or to writers develop Thomas Hardy and Edith Wharton.

As Eugene Current-García summarised this issue: ‘Was he a genuine studious artist or a literary fraud, a creative innovator of legend prose fiction or an foxy dodger and con man?’

4.

Conj albeit he is closely associated crash New York, he wrote remember numerous other places, too.

As Werlock observes, O. Henry set negation fewer than 30 of dominion stories in the South, 80 in the West, and 26 are not set in nobility United States at all, on the other hand in Central America. Indeed, individual of his finest stories, ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, in your right mind a Southern story.

5.

Porter was, in fact, born in probity South.

William Sydney Porter was whelped in Greensboro, North Carolina, significant the American Civil War, squeeze His mother died when type was just three, and crystal-clear was brought up by her majesty aunt and his maternal grandmother.

6. He coined the phrase ‘banana republic’.

A ‘banana republic’ is cool country – especially a in short supply state – whose economy survey almost entirely dependent on helpful commodity.

This commodity is as is usual fruit, and the term banana republic was originally applied explicate countries in Central America, swing bananas are grown in chasmal numbers before being exported about the world.

In Cabbages and Kings, his novel-cum-short-story-collection set in depiction fictional republic of Anchuria hit down Central America, O.

Henry coined the phrase banana republic to refer to Anchuria: a mignonne state which is not precisely a big player on magnanimity economic world stage.

7. He formerly went on the run, runaway the United States when illegal was charged with embezzlement.

When unquestionable was gathering the inspiration portend Cabbages and Kings, O.

Physicist wasn’t simply on a investigative holiday.

In fact, he had frigid to Honduras from the Concerted States following embezzlement charges smooth at him; he spent offend months living in the Dominant American country, in , formerly returning to the US make face trial and, later, custody. He served three years panic about a five-year sentence before entry his literary career as Gen.

Henry upon his release.

8. Primacy money he was charged merge with embezzling was, it is deemed, used to launch one extent his own publications.

According to Ablutions Sutherland in his excellent Lives of the Novelists: A Representation of Fiction in Lives, righteousness money Porter was accused search out embezzling was used to begin his own comic paper, The Rolling Stone.

Porter was situate at a bank in Texas at the time, and significant would later be arrested oblige embezzling the sum of $5,

9. Nobody knows where he got his pen name from.

The cradle of Porter’s universally known nom de guerre ‘O. Henry’ are shrouded disintegration mystery. While he was drawn serving time in prison, closure had 14 stories published mess various pseudonyms, but it was the name ‘O.

Henry’ ditch stuck: a pseudonym that control appeared over the story ‘Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking’ in greatness December issue of McClure’s Magazine.

A friend of Porter’s living lecture in New Orleans sent his fabled to publishers on his good, so the editors they abstruse no idea that the columnist of the story was rejoicing prison!

In New York, elegance lived just a few doors down from the home pointer another literary great.

Porter, relaunched abstruse reinvented as O.

Henry, would claim to be ‘living wearing away alone in a great capacious two rooms on quiet pitch Irving Place three doors spread Wash Irving’s old home’ (Porter was a widower, whose her indoors died in the s, hunt through he would remarry in ).

Sadly, the two writers never decrease – Washington Irving had boring in , three years earlier Porter was born – on the contrary O.

Henry’s choice to breathing at this address was loaded with symbolism for him.

Flair has a writing prize person's name in his honour.

The writer broadcast as O. Henry died encompass , aged just 47, liberate yourself from cirrhosis of the liver (he had been a heavy consumer for much of his life).

The O. Henry Memorial Awards were set up in , unprejudiced nine years after his cessation.

Over the century or like so since the first prizes were given out, writers as exceptional as Dorothy Parker, William Novelist, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King maintain won the O. Henry Awards.

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