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O. Henry is the pseudonym of the American writer William Sidney Porter. W. Porter was born on September 11, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. When he was three years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. The boy was raised by his aunt. After school, he worked in a pharmacy, in a tobacco shop, in the land administration, in a bank. He was brought to trial for embezzlement, but fled and hid in Honduras.
Porter spent three years in prison (from 1898 to 1901). It was in prison that he wrote the first story under the pseudonym O. Henry - "Dick the Whistler's Christmas Gift" (1899). By 1904, the writer had published the novel "Kings and Cabbage". But he won fame as a master of the short story. Collections "Four Million" (1906), "Burning Lamp" (1907), "Voice of the City" and "Noble Crook" (1908), "Ways of Fate" and "Favorites" (1909), "Exact Cases" and "Colorotation" (1910). In total, O. Henry wrote 273 stories, 30 stories a year. The writer came up with the plots of his works while wandering around the impoverished neighborhoods in New York. But it was here that heroes appeared - Don Quixotes and Cinderellas, Diogenes - who were ready to help desperate people.
The last years O. Henry spent alone, in a cheap hotel room.
The writer died in 1910 year in New York.