He wrote nearly 600 stories about life in America.

2.Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses, etc.

3.Porter attended school for a short time, then clerked in an uncle's drugstore. At the age of 20 William Sydney Porter went to Texas, working first on a ranch and later as a bank teller. In 1887 he married and began to write freelance sketches.

4.William Sydney Porter was imprisoned in Columbus, Ohio indicted in 1896 for embezzling bank funds .

5.While in prison he began writing short stories in order to support his young daughter Margaret. His first published story was "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" (1899). He used a pseudonym['s(j)uːdənɪm], Olivier Henry, only once and changed his pen name to O. Henry, not wanting his readers to know he was in jail. He published 12 stories while in prison. 

 6. He moved to New York City, where over the next ten years before his death in 1910, he published over 300 stories and gained worldwide fame as America's favorite short story writer.

7.  O. Henry's trademark is his witty, plot-twisting endings, and his warm characterization of the awkward['ɔːkwəd] and difficult situations and the creative ways people find to resolve them.

8. O. Henry’s most famous story, “The Gift of the Magi['meɪʤaɪ],” translated and reprinted every Christmas around the world, was written in three hours to meet a deadline that O. Henry had ignored for several days.

9. The plot alone—a young woman sells her long beautiful hair to buy her husband a fob chain for his prized watch, only to discover that he has sold his watch to buy a set of tortoiseshell['tɔːtəʃʃel] combs for her vanished hair—is enough to make the story a classic about the spirit of Christmas.