O. Henry 1862–1910 - an American writer, known as a master of short stories and unexpected endings. William Sidney Porter is the writer's real name, he was born to a doctor’s family in Greensboro, North Carolina. He lost his parents early and was raised by his aunt's family, who owned a private school, and at the age of 16 started working part-time as a pharmacist in a drugstore. Fearing tuberculosis, from which his mother died, William changed the climate, worked on a ranch in Texas for two years, where for the first time, at 18, he began to write. After moving to Austin, he tried many professions: an accountant in a real estate agency, a draftsman in the land office, a cashier and bookkeeper in a bank, while also running his own humor weekly, Rolling Stone. But fate took an unexpected turn: the bank accused him as a cashier of a shortfall. Porter fled and hid in South America for six months; his wife's illness forced him to return. Although there was little evidence, the young writer was convicted and sent to prison for three years. However, his sense of humor did not leave him - it was around that time that O. Henry's first publications appeared, and it is possible that his pen name was an abbreviation of the name of the prison in Ohio. Full of subtle humor, unexpected comparisons, and unpredictable conclusions, O. Henry’s stories quickly gained popularity. He was compared to Maupassant and Kipling and called the American Chekhov. Since 1904, after his only novel, Kings and Cabbage, nine collections of stories were published one after another: Four Million 1906, The Burning Lamp 1907, The Heart of the West 1907, The Voice of the City 1908, The Gentlemen of New York 1908, The Roads of Destiny 1909, Selected 1909, Business Men 1910, and The Whirligig 1910; in a short time, he wrote almost three hundred short stories. In 1918, the annual O. Henry Award was established for the best short story; its laureates included Truman Capote, William Faulkner, John Updike, and Stephen King. The current edition includes stories from different years; the title story and perhaps the most famous - The Leader of the Redskins - was published in O. Henry's last collection during his lifetime. In 1910, the writer died at the age of 47.
