This Week in Literary History: O. Henry is Released from Prison

This Week in Literary History: O. Henry is Released from Prison “If he had simply gone back to Austin when he was summoned to stand trial, he would have been acquitted.” This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here. Famously, O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter), author of “The Gift of the Magi,” and one of the most celebrated short story writers of his generation, and whose legacy is celebrated every year by the O. Henry Prize for Fiction, got his start in prison, while serving time for embezzling funds from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas, where he had worked as a teller. It’s possible that Porter shouldn’t have been convicted at all: a 1916 report characterized the bank in question as “carelessly managed,” and revealed that “the patrons used to enter, go behind the counter, take out one hundred or two hundred dollars and say a week later, ‘Porter, I took out $200, last week. See if I left a memorandum of it. I meant to.’” The Times report claims that Porter, who by the time he was charged had moved to Houston and taken a job as a columnist with The Daily Post, resigned before one of the “misappropriations with which he was charged,” and that if he had simply gone back to Austin when he was summoned to stand trial, he would have been acquitted. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a train to New Orleans, and then hopped on a fruit steamer headed for Honduras, where the law could not reach him. But in February of 1897, he learned that his wife was very ill, and he returned to the states to care for her. His wife died in July, and Porter was convicted the following year, and in March 1898, sentenced to five years in prison for embezzlement. The literary world should be grateful for his poor luck, because it was in prison that Porter “did his first serious literary work,” as the Times puts it. In order to be able to send money home to support his daughter Margaret, he wrote and published 14 short stories, under pen names, including the one with which he would become famous: O. Henry. Porter was released early for good behavior, on July 24, 1901, and returned to Pittsburgh to live with his daughter and his in-laws, before moving on to New York City. Most importantly, he kept writing, and in 1904 published his first collection of short stories, Cabbages and Kings, followed two years later by The Four Million, which would include some of his most enduring tales, including “The Gift of the Magi.” He was incredibly prolific; he would keep publishing until his death in 1910, and well beyond.