He gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name. Margaret was never told that her father had been in prison—just that he had been away on business. [12], Writer and scholar Guy Davenport offers his own hypothesis: "The pseudonym that he began to write under in prison is constructed from the first two letters of Ohio and the second and last two of penitentiary."[10]. In 1909, Sarah left him, and he died on June 5, 1910, of cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes, and an enlarged heart. Porter met and began courting Athol Estes, 17 years old and from a wealthy family.

[6] His daughter Margaret Worth Porter had a short writing career from 1913 to 1916. [9] Nevertheless, the name "O. Henry" seemed to garner the most attention from editors and the public, and was used exclusively by Porter for his writing by about 1902. Athol Estes Porter died from tuberculosis (then known as consumption) on July 25, 1897. Postal Service issued its O. Henry stamp. [3] He holed up in a Trujillo hotel, where he wrote Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term "banana republic" to qualify the country, a phrase subsequently used widely to describe a small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America with a narrowly focused, agrarian economy.[4]. Who Is The Greatest Female Warrior In History? O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. He was sentenced to five years in prison and imprisoned on March 25, 1898, at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. "Here we have our notables," said he. However, his writing and drawings had caught the attention of the editor at the Houston Post. O. Henry, a good singer and musician himself started singing with the group in gatherings. On July 1, 1887, he eloped and married Athol Estes, then a seventeen year old girl of a wealthy family. An opera in one long act, The Furnished Room, with music by Daniel Steven Crafts and libretto by Richard Kuss, is based on O. Henry's story of the same name. They had a daughter Margaret Worth Porter, born in September 1889. Margaret was unaware of her father’s imprisonment and knew that he was away on business. He sang in the choir at St. David's Episcopal Church and became a member of the "Hill City Quartette", a group of young men who sang at gatherings and serenaded young women of the town. A film was made in 1952 featuring five stories, called O. Henry's Full House.

‘Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking’, published in ‘McClure's Magazine’ in its December 1899 issue was the first story where he used this pseudonym. When William was three, his mother died after giving birth to her third child, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. He took up residence on the sheep ranch of Richard Hall, James Hall's son, in La Salle County and helped out as a shepherd, ranch hand, cook, and baby-sitter. While serving the ‘First National Bank’, he founded ‘The Rolling Stone’, a humorous weekly, and after losing his bank job, he devoted full time in the weekly that published his sketches, short stories apart from satirical and political works. In February he was indicted for embezzlement of bank funds. Porter had little to say in his own defense at his trial and was found guilty on February 17, 1898, of embezzling $854.08. Henry, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=O._Henry&oldid=984921327, 19th-century American short story writers, 20th-century American short story writers, Alcohol-related deaths in New York (state), Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1922 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia introduction cleanup from February 2020, Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from February 2020, All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify, Articles needing additional references from September 2014, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Part one. [17] In response, political science professor P. S. Ruckman Jr. and Texas attorney Scott Henson filed a formal application for a posthumous pardon in September 2012, the same month that the U.S.

Porter was a licensed pharmacist and was able to work in the prison hospital as the night druggist. While in Texas, William became a henry of sorts and he earned recognition as a broncobuster. William Sydney Porter - O. Henry, Books & Stories - Biography. Porter was released on July 24, 1901, for good behavior after serving three years. Henry Award’ is given annually for remarkable short stories. Henry Hall’. Thereafter he stayed in a hotel in Trujillo, Peru, for several months. Friends aided his flight to Honduras.

None of your three-syllable names for me." His success brought the attendant pressure, and he suffered from alcohol addiction. On July 1, 1887, Porter eloped with Athol and they were married in the parlor of the home of the Reverend R. K. Smoot, pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church, where the Estes family attended church. Even after a high circulation of 1500 copies of ‘The Rolling Stone’, the venture failed in April 1895 due to inadequate income. Many of his short stories were published while he was in prison. O. Henry Hall, now owned by the Texas State University System, previously served as the federal courthouse in which O. Henry was convicted of embezzlement. [20] Ruckman and Henson argued that Porter deserved a pardon because (1) he was a law-abiding citizen prior to his conviction; (2) his offense was minor; (3) he had an exemplary prison record; (4) his post-prison life clearly indicated rehabilitation; (5) he would have been an excellent candidate for clemency in his time, had he but applied for pardon; (6) by today's standards, he remains an excellent candidate for clemency; and (7) his pardon would be a well-deserved symbolic gesture and more. Dowd, and Howard Clark. On November 23, 2011, Barack Obama quoted O. Henry while granting pardons to two turkeys named "Liberty" and "Peace". He reunited with his daughter Margaret, now age 11, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Athol's parents had moved after Porter's conviction. Help me pick out a good one." There he read classic literature, worked as a baby-sitter, shepherd and cook and learned bits of German and Spanish from the culturally diverse helping hands of the ranch. He also began writing as a sideline and wrote many of his early stories in the Harrell house.

2692’. The O. Henry House has been the site of the O. Henry Pun-Off, an annual spoken word competition inspired by Porter's love of language, since 1978. Sketches: "Did You See the Circus", "Thanksgiving Remarks", "When the Train Comes in", "Christmas Eve", "New Year's Eve and Now it Came to Houston", ", Part three. She married cartoonist Oscar Cesare of New York in 1916; they were divorced four years later. William Sydney Porter was a prolific short story writer whose work appeared under the name O. Henry. But a wiser man has arisen—the census taker—and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million.'"

He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. In he went to Texas , where he worked on a ranch, in a general land office, and later as teller in the First National Bank in Austin. After long suffering from tuberculosis, Athol died on July 25, 1897.

[15] The O. Henry Hotel in Greensboro is also named for Porter, as is US 29 which is O. Henry Boulevard. Peters, James L. Bliss, T.B.

I said to a friend: "I'm going to send out some stuff. His parents were Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–65). He fled, first to New Orleans and later to Honduras, with which the United States had no extradition treaty at that time.

While on the ranch, he learned bits of Spanish and German from the mix of immigrant ranch hands. His most famous short stories are ‘The Gift of the Magi’, ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’, ‘The Caballero’s Way’ and ‘The Duplicity of Hargraves’ among others. William Sydney Porter, more famous by his pen name O. Henry, was an American author of short stories. File Name: life and achievements of o henry.zip. The term ‘banana republic’ coined by him and used in the book eventually became widely used to depict an unstable country of Latin America. He left school at the age of 15 and then had a number of jobs, including bank clerk. Porter started as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office (GLO) on January 12, 1887, at a salary of $100 a month, drawing maps from surveys and fieldnotes. Resemblance of the building was also found in few of his stories like the 1894 published ‘Bexar Scrip No. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. He started working in his uncle's drugstore in and became a licensed pharmacist by the age of His first creative expressions came while working in the pharmacy where he would sketch the townspeople that frequented the store. Athol gave birth to a son in 1888, who died hours after birth, and then daughter Margaret Worth Porter in September 1889. When that venture failed, Porter joined the Houston Post as reporter, columnist, and occasional cartoonist. Born on September 11, , to a middle-class family, William was the middle child of three sons. A federal indictment followed, and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement.

His army took Thérouanne and – more importantly – Tournai, which was one of the largest medieval cities in Northern Europe. He had 14 stories published under various pseudonyms while he was in prison but was becoming best known as "O. Henry", a pseudonym that first appeared over the story "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in the December 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine. Unfortunately, Athol became too ill to meet Porter in Honduras as he had planned.