In the early twentieth century, William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, captured the fancy and touched the hearts of newspaper and magazine writers throughout the United States. Interpreted as quintessentially American, O. Henry's short fiction made him the spokesman for Manhattan's "four million" during his own era. In nearly three hundred stories, O. Henry's artistry, style, and technique has been compared favorably with writers such as Conrad, Hardy, and Wharton.
In this new volume, Eugene Current-Garcia presents a comparative survey of critical attitudes and evaluations of O. Henry's short fiction from as early as 1908, through the 1920s and 1930s, and up to more recent decades. Current-Garcia traces the influence of O. Henry's childhood in North Carolina, as well as his early adulthood spent in the western frontier in Texas and along the border of Mexico. The landscapes of his stories were vastly enriched by his unique life experiences, both as a convicted criminal who learned to write short stories while in jail and, later, as a literary celebrity in New York City.