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O. Henry

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From: Encyclopedia of World Biography
Date: 20040101
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O. Henry

The American short-story writer William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), who wrote under the pseudonym O. Henry, pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class New Yorkers.

William Sydney Porter was born in Greensboro, N.C., on Sept. 11, 1862. He attended school for a short time, then clerked in an uncle's drugstore. At the age of 20 he went to Texas, working first on a ranch and later as a bank teller. In 1887 he married and began to write free-lance sketches. A few years later he founded a humorous weekly, the Rolling Stone. When this failed, he became a ...

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