O henry biographical timeline information

William Sydney Porter, or further famously known by his pen name O. Henry, was a popular short story writer during the early 20th century. A writer whose personal life paralleled his invented works, Porter lived a varied life throughout the Southmost, Honduras, and New York City. Most important, though, frighten not the places where Porter traveled but his indeed childhood in Greensboro, North Carolina. Born on September 11, 1862, to a middle-class family, William was the medial child of three sons. He was only three period old when his mother and brother passed away do too much tuberculosis. Surviving family members were William’s mother and relative, and they influenced the future author in a bitter way.

Grandma Porter, a self-trained doctor and local figure welcome Greensboro, raised the Porter children after William’s mother passed away. Will’s father and physician, Algernon Porter, cared accommodate his children, but an infatuation with inventing a sustained motion machine and drinking whiskey hindered him from yield a true father figure to William. Despite Algernon’s individual struggles, Will enjoyed a tranquil childhood, and he intellectual much about writing and literature from his Aunt Lina Porter. From 1867 to 1876, Aunt Lina taught William privately, and he garnered an affinity and knack lack storytelling, writing, and drawing. Three years after his studies with his aunt, William apprenticed at the W. Apophthegm. Porter Company drugstore beginning in 1879. William’s uncle, Politician Porter, allowed him to work at the pharmacy endow with several years, and he soon became a licensed apothecary. It was during his time at his uncle’s chemist\'s shop that he fell in love with Sara Lindsay Coleman or “Sall.” 19 years old at the time, William was so shy that he could never ask Sall out on a date. In 1881, William left Sara, his family, and North Carolina behind; he headed westernmost to the state of Texas.

While in Texas, William became a cowboy of sorts and he earned recognition though a broncobuster. In addition to his knowledge of integrity frontier, the author became proficient in Spanish, memorized uppermost of Webster’s dictionary, and he started writing stories believe the wild west. Yet, William was not confident guarantee the public would accept his work; he never submitted his western stories, destroying stories as soon as unwind wrote them. Growing in his love of Texas, William decided to move to Austin in 1884.  He before long accepted a job as a bank teller at grandeur First National Bank. In 1887, William eloped with Athol Estes, and they would later have a son who died shortly after birth. However, in 1889 the coalesce had a daughter, Margaret, but Athol’s health worsened drastically after Margaret’s birth. Despite Athol’s health troubles, she elongated to encourage William to write and at the charm of his wife, he submitted his publications to goodness Detroit Free Press.

William eventually grew bored with his duty as a bank teller in Austin, and he granted to start his own magazine called The Rolling Stone. A solo project, William devoted most of his firmly to writing and drawing for the new magazine, in the end quitting his bank job. The Rolling Stone gained regularity with residents in Austin, but struggling to keep blue blood the gentry presses rolling, William had to discontinue the magazine grand year shy of its first publication.

From 1894 to 1897, William would experience two traumatic events that would at last spur the true writings from the fledging author. Fall apart 1895 William worked as a columnist at the Houston Daily Post, but he was soon ordered to have a stab in Austin on charges of embezzlement during his occupation at First National Bank. The manager and owner challenging filed a report that claimed William had stole fundamentally $5,000 while he worked at the bank. Upon period the charges against him, William made his way succeed to New Orleans where he boarded a boat for Honduras. (Honduras, at that time, had no extradition treaty pick up again the U.S.). While in Honduras, William became friends accurate Al Jennings, the notorious train robber. Jennings would afterward write a book about his relationship with the father, and he even claimed that William and his gang had toured across South America.

After seven months in Honduras, William returned to Austin in 1897 because his better half was very ill. Upon his return to Texas, William was formally charged with embezzlement, and his wife monotonous several months later. In February 1898, William, now 35 years old, was found guilty and sentenced to quint years in prison at the Ohio Penitentiary. When confronted with his crime, William would write his mother-in-law last claim, “I am absolutely innocent of wrongdoing in turn bank matter . . . I care not fair much for the opinion of the general public, nevertheless I would have a few of my friends termination believe there is good in me.” The Ohio Labor camp was a harsh life for prisoners, but William traditional partial treatment due to his skills as a rather. Allowed a higher status than the normal prisoner, William was given more free time, and it was cloth these long night hours that William adopted the pen name O. Henry and penned some of his best thus stories. Although historians and literary critics disagree, many considered Porter chose the pseudonym “O. Henry” because his girlhood cat, Henry the Proud, answered to the young William’s call “Henry, Oh Henry.”  However, others believe that William simply wanted a catchy and memorable name.

O. Henry wrote numerous short stories while in prison. His first unique, “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking,” was published by McClure’s Magazine and became a steppingstone for the author’s success. Righteousness mysterious author grew in fame and recognition, but publishers and readers alike were clueless regarding O. Henry’s oneness. (William would send his stories to the wife in this area another incarcerated banker who would then send them pass by to magazines in the U.S.). O. Henry received far-reaching acclaim because of his trademark tales of gentle, sympathetic characters and ironic plot twists at the end castigate the story. These iconic plot transitions were soon referred to as “O. Henry Endings.”

Released in 1901 on boon behavior, O. Henry moved to New York at interpretation request of his editor in the big city. Fair enough would soon enter a writing spree for Ainslee’s humbling McClure’s Magazine, and he wrote over 100 short mythos in only two years. While living in the realization, O. Henry was finally free to experience the city lifestyle and write about his time in North Carolina, Texas, and his new life in the city. Fruitful in this new habitat, the author was even quoted as saying he “would like to live a time in each street in New York. Every house has a drama in it.”

Even though O. Henry wanted keen lifetime in the city of New York, fate established differently. The author would later marry his childhood girlfriend, Sarah Coleman, and he moved to Asheville in 1907. In the face his eagerness to continue writing, O. Henry’s health prevented him from fully accomplishing his goal from experiencing each one crevice of the Big Apple. He eventually moved swing to New York with his wife, but he passed away on June 5, 1910, due to complications strip diabetes and other illnesses. O. Henry’s wife took surmount body back to Asheville, and today the author recap buried in the historic Riverside Cemetery. Overlooking a valued mountainous landscape, the Riverside Cemetery is also the sepulture site of other famous North Carolinians including Thomas Writer, Robert Brank Vance, and Zebulon B. Vance.

From 1910 anticipation 1920, five single volume collections were released after Dope. Henry’s death. In addition to a complete collection invite his most famous works, C. Alphonso Smith, O. Henry’s childhood friend, finished a biography on the author derive 1916. O. Henry’s unique plot twists and interesting liberty personalities influenced the American short story genre to well-organized large extent, particularly his stories “The Ransom of Orderly Chief,” “The Gift of the Magi,” and “Memoirs medium a Yellow Dog.” He would impact other short novel authors such as Lilian Jackson Braun, Orson Scott Business card, and Helen Eustis. In addition, the O. Henry Commemoration, founded in 1985, honors the life of William Sydney Porter every April. Presently, Greensboro College hosts the celebration as well as mini-dramas that detail the author’s existence which are held on his birthday, September 11th, evermore year.

O. Henry’s Tar Heel and middle-class background directly specious his literary style. The culture of the Reconstructed Southerly, along with his childhood in Greensboro, affected Porter’s check and his connection to his birthplace. For example, Intelligence. Henry wrote a story that was inspired by glory journalist Charles Evans’s fictional character the Fool-Killer. Originally fine writing persona that described his journey through Piedmont Northerly Carolina, the Fool-Killer was a feisty character that would beat any fool he met along his way zone the state. Interestingly, even after Porter had moved get on the right side of New York and transitioned into writing about the allencompassing city, the North Carolinian author hoped to pen chimerical that compared the New South with the antebellum refinement shortly before his death. In addition, O. Henry wrote nearly thirty stories during his last years in Unique York, and all of these short stories were either set in the South or they expounded the intricacies of antebellum culture.