O.Henry

O. Henry

·         O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina.

·         When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt.

·         In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

·         In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone.

·         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 First National Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller.

·         When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial.

·         Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

·         While in prison, Porter 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.

·         After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.

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